Xibvant of (ton$xt$$. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




LiSS*'" 




/ r / 



PFLMOMRY CONSUMPTION, 



THAT 



Fatal Destroyer of Man! 

ITS 

CURABILITY DEMONSTRATED ON NATURAL 
PRINCIPLES ALONE. 

COMBINING 

MEDICATED AIR, MEDICATED INHALATION, and NATURAL HYGIENE. 



BY 

ANDREW STONE, M.D., 

MOB OF THE PULMOMETER, OR TESTER OF TnE VITAL CAPACITY; AUTHOR OF THE 
THERMAL OR COOL SYSTEM OF MEDICATED INHALATION; AND PHYSICIAN 
TO THE TROY LUNG AND HYGIENIC INSTITUTE. 



" Thb lungs are breathing or respiratory organs alone, an. 1 as the blood, tho brain, and nervous 
system U contaminated and diseased, through them, by mepbltic or poisoned air, so also can the anti- 
data or sanitary remedies b- administered through the same medium." — ACTHOB, 

" Hi studied from the life, 

And in the original perused mankind." — ABMBTBOHO, 
" Wim.F the suffering? and the untimely end "f th<- consumptive are hidden beneath the pi 
of fvb'mnable life, the couch of sickness and the premature grave will oot want for tenants from the 
ranks of youth and beaut 



ILLUSTRATED WITH PLATES. 



PUBLISHED BY 1 HE 

TROY LUNG AND HYGIENIC IXSTmTr; 

No. 96 Fifth Street, Troy, N. Y. 
i sea. 

Zvtrtmi accord *c M 

Court o^;^ i rork, 

/, 13 4 3^ ^^> ?■ /fez 



THE PULMO METER 

iinm ii» my 
ANDREW STONE, M.D. 




Tins philosophical and ingeniously contrived instrument is constructed on correct 
tific principles, It consists of a glass reservoir for containing air, graduated into 

I It mding in a bowl of water, with a valve and .stop-cork. The person 

g hifl capacity, instantly exhausti his breath at the time of putting the tube or 

mouth-piece into his lips ; the valve is at once opened, and the lungs are filled, exclu- 
from the air contained in the jar; water takes the place of the vacuum formed 

bj the air passing out into the person 1 ! lungs. From experiment on many thousands, 
;i demonstrated thai the average capacity of males, in health, is 224 cubic 

inches, and of females, abonl 17."> or 180 cubic inches; accordingly it will be readily 

that the lessening or falling off in the vital capacity will demonstrate to a moral 

either structural or functional disease. The incipient process of tubercle 

or scrofulous deposit in the minute air-cells of the lungs, can be detected by this 
tific method earlier than by any other; hence it- wonderful importance in discrimi- 
nating the true condition of each OBSe, and in pointing out a timely aid, to arrest its 
fmtt. the want of which vast many cases WOUld be allowed to run to a 

Qcholy fatality. Truly Medicine is a noble profession, when it enlists the hand of 

and invention causes it to become i healing art indeed, by stay- 

B fated and dread malady. She will now take her place among 

her • onward progress to new developments that will ameliorate tho 

of "uffrring humanity, and cause joy and happiness to take the place of 



.firivt §crtio)L 



PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 

Ir never vu designed, in the structure of man, thai his existence 

iture decay; that he Bhould pass away 

life at that moment when every thing around points 

to the activity of being. Such, however, La 

: but the result is chiefly owing to the many arts 

rhich he i- reduced, in society, for the sustenance of that life ><> 

munificently bestowed apon him. To meet and, if possible, to avert 

evil by all th< within his art b the business of the physician. 

3 the heart of a generous physician with greater Borrow 

Icitude than to sec the young, the beautiful, the 

I unhindered by hi> remedies and unaided by his art. 

•urn t<» him their appealing eyes, as to a " Priest of the 

is tln-n the in:. n "t' sympathy feels the heavy re- 

ty of hi- ]•:• I . " Buch circumstances, he finds 

■ \ to pronounce the disease incurable, how unsatisfac- 

. iial efforts! Se may endeavor to smooth the pillow, 

tient from an inevitable doom. 

Pulmonary Consumption, until within a verj few 

year ancertainty and darkness. Bi 

universal consent among the uneducated, and with t'<w and solitary 

cxv mi. tin- disease has ever been regarded 

ol medicine, it was thought, could drive out or 

a ht n "n<-<' it i. jion 

of tli<* lungs. 

thi d< licate 

rould the fine, membranous surface of this 

th tubercles, or corrode w itli 

; - ■ of life. 1 dies applied \\« re of a 

character by : the I 



4 PULMONABT CONSUMPTION. 

r Lb it discovered thai the kings of a patient are diseased 
than a vigorous attack i- made apon the stomach, and pills and pow- 
aps, and these generally composed of mercury, calomel, 
antimony, or some other deadly and poisonous materials of the Old 
Allopathic School are brought to bear upon the arsenal of nourish' 
ment y if ;• functions arc disturbed; its digestive powers arc 

weakened; its assimilation of nutrition is rendered imperfect. Dys- 
pepsia follows, with its train of miseries. The organs depending upon 
it for their daily employment are thrown into confusion. The heart 
uo longer propels its Btream of generous blood in an equal current ; 
it- impurities promote irregular and fitful pulsations. The liver, cut 
off from its healthy occupation, sinks into languid inaction. The pan* 

\ w hose function is to secrete an important fluid to aid assimilation, 
is deranged <>r suspended. The kidneys, unused to foreign secretions, 
yet compelled to labor beyond their design, in removing the op- 
pressions of the system. The bowels become confined, and every de- 
partment in the economy of life is disturbed. The wheels of this com- 
plicated machinery are thrown out of balance, and is it surprising if all 
sink together, shattered by the force of nature still remaining in the 

in but undirected to its proper ends'/ 

I. u- turn from this practice, which originated in the dark ages of 
the world, before Bcience possessed a knowledge of organic structure 
t'i base a rational treatment indicated from its function, as modern 
discoveries do now with the lungs, by administering medication in na- 
tural respiration, by breathing or inhaling them in the form of vapors. 

On entering active practice, the victims of tubercular consumption 
brought to my notice constituted an appalling number. These facta 
elicited my deepest solicitude, regarding its very general prevalence 
and fatality. 

But why should I be consulted as to its cure, so long as my instruc- 
from the schools and the books I had read on the subject all pro- 
nounced it incurable ? 

The thought seemed to force itself upon my mind, as by spiritual 
impression : how were you cured ? How was your mother cured before 
■ Shall the numerous victims now appealing to you, and implor- 
ing yon for aid. be doomed to hopeless disappointment, and science 
and art go begging and confess an inefficiency for the ills of life? 

>ns haunted my mind by day and by night. An inward 

monl ied to rise Dp Bud chide me when I even cautiously cx- 

pressed the ambiguous opinion of authority of some gray-headed veterans 

ion t<> a doting mother, respecting the foreboding symp- 

aow menacing a fearful development, at a period 



PULMONAKY CONSUMPT] 

of i;. bad filled her breast with the most glowing antici- 

:- the future. Under Buch circumstances, when a mother or 
u . U( i b, bol too keenly, the seeming dissolution spread- 

. ed form, exquisite as angel beauty can picture, not in Km> 
• in reality on earth even, there will Bpring ap in the 
s the deepest sentiments and evolutions of the bouI, b murmur, 
- ntion,thaf questions even the goodness of Omnipotence 
removing, so prematurely, the object of earth's dearest affec- 
■ Btudied, not read, nor developed into the more pro- 
phflosophy of a demonstrated reality, in the continued spirit- 
outside of the frail form of earth, now so melancholy di- 
Dsequently, can not see the just penalty for Badly, 
antly it may be, violating the imperative laws of physical 
ligappointment obscures the future and ex- 
- ardently anticipated here, 

irhat ■ panorama for moral refleo- 

a dafly opened to my riewl a profession that had fired my 

thru! ambition. as one promising laurels of victory in the opportu- 

the clamorings of a preponderating benevolence. 

I dd nature be true to create contingencies and Bufferings in her offi 

Ide no alternative and qo relief for the emergencies? 

as like these would suggest themselves to my mind, and be 

renew, <1 witi fresh opportunity or case. 

1 many a tine- were my ears greeted with murmurs, repin- 

rty of the Creator, called forth from par- 

rty physioa] Buffering and premature dissolution of 

.. childrei '• hi the morning of their existence. 

.,- an< i in,-.-. in of thought and reflection obtains, for 

nd the sufferer whose head has 

1 by the frosts of many winters, who often become and 

itional than the youth or tender age of adolescence, irho, 

•. M nature, yields ap lift —even 

laws they have both innocently and 

ted— with a meekness and submission produced by 

fond parents and friends, and a confiding trust 

In an abiding F [nstances of submission like these teach a 

more enduring and instructive 
rrer. Why is this! B< cause it is a 
as the innocent young, 
w ] tied in the distracting • 

in future life when '- ] of pride and 

it- 



(5 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

Physical suffering does not always lead to develop reason, nor the 
moral sentiments of our nature. The mass of mankind pursue the 
objects of worldly gain with an infatuation that engrosses and capti- 
vates reason and reflection from principles of a graver and enduring 
origin. The greatest good or blessing while on earth — health — is 
swallowed, like Aaron's rod, in the passion for luxury and the animal 
appetites ; hence the lessons of moral instruction, to be drawn from 
sickness and disease, are lost on this class for not knowing nor recog- 
nizing any laws for life and health. To those, therefore, who see 
nothing in life — no higher aim but the ambition of personal pride, of 
gaudy display, and, by realizing such accomplishments, find their happi- 
ness and enjoyment only in despising and envying others, when the 
objects of earth's affections, in which were centered the desires of 
gratification, are suddenly removed by early death — then it is to them 
a vale, behind which God hides a mysterious and, too often, a fated 
and malevolent design. While the sufferings and untimely end of the 
consumptive are hidden beneath the pleasures of fashionable life, the 
couch of sickness and the premature grave will not want for tenants 
from the ranks of youth and beauty. 

Be the occurrences of death from this cause in whatever condition 
of life they may, they appeal equally alike and continually to the 
device and genius of the physician to stay the ravages of disease — to 
grasp at death and stay his flying dart. 

Such were the pathetic appeals constantly made to my professional 
capacity, in behalf of the numerous and almost innumerable number 
of victims of pulmonary consumption. I could not yield credence to 
the assumption that Omnipotence had permitted a physical ill without 
a provision for its mitigation at least. I possessed the practical illustra- 
tion of my own and my mother's cure, spontaneously, by the inherent 
resources of the constitution, as evidence that nature could cure pulmo- 
nary consumption, stay the bleeding wound, and heal the ulcerated 
cavities — even when thwarted by officious interference: then would 
she not be more likely to do so when kindly and consistently aided by 
art? The evidence being but too palpable that the system hitherto 
practiced — giving medicines by the stomach — was but a blind mission 
to the lungs, and nothing short of failure and ill-success could attend 
this method. Being convinced of this fundamental error, it was easy, 
then, taking reason as my guide and looking to the natural function of 
each organ, to perceive that the lungs, being breathing organs only, 
alone could be reached effectively and with certainty by remedies 
administered by breathing or inhaling them in the shape of vapors. 
Every person knows that by the atmosphere — by breathing — the most 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 7 

deadly and subtle gases enter the lungs and the blood, and thereby 
poison the whole system. It is so with contagious and atmospheric 
diseases of every nature ; they enter the blood through the medium 
of the lungs. Does it not follow, then, that the only rational, ready, 
and natural manner of reaching the lungs, in the way of medication, 
is to administer them in the form of vapors ? Every remedy that can 
be of benefit, or judiciously advised, can be easily volatilized, or made 
into a congenial vapor, and made to reach the lungs and parts affected 
with facility and even pleasure. The most inveterate form of pneu- 
monia, or congestion of the lungs, can be successfully treated in this 
manner, without delay in the desired effects ; but instead of adopting 
this method, what is the practice still pursued by the allopathic school? 
Answer : The life-blood is drawn from the arm by the pint ; tartarized 
antimony, or some other sickening and poisonous material, is given by 
the stomach, which is deranged in its healthy function ; the natural 
secretions are perverted, the appetite suspended, and the victim re- 
duced to a state of debility thereby so great as to endanger life, inde- 
pendent of the lesions, or the inflammatory disease of the lungs, which 
they have failed to relieve by their practice. As irrational and deadly 
as is this system, it is clung to with a tenacity that only governs 
prejudice in all creeds where reason is subverted in the tyranny of 
dogmatism. 

Under a well-regulated system of medical treatment, administered 
by breathing them in the form of vapors, both cool and warm, as the 
cases required, we have found, after fifteen years' extensive expe- 
rience in treating pulmonary consumption, that it is as curable as any 
other disease. Especially is this the case when we see the case in 
its incipient stages. In truth, so successful has been our treatment, by 
inhalation of medicated vapors into the lungs, that we regard pulmo- 
nary consumption as curable as a common fever or catarrh. We have 
seen many and many a patient who had become so far advanced as 
to be in the third stage, in which ulceration had produced caverns in 
the lungs, attended with hectic fever, night-sweats, cold chills, and 
harassing coughs — they had been confined to house and to bed for 
months, and were given up to die by their family physician of the old 
school— completely restored to good health and strength, and once 
more enabled to go into the world and enjoy the blessings and privi- 
leges of society. To demonstrate these facts, and illustrate the method 
of treatment pursued by our Institution, we will here introduce the 
statement of a patient, Mr. Otis Walker, whose cure is now of four 
years' duration, as but recently testified to. 



8 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

Copy of a letter from Otis "Walker, Sherburne, Vt., showing the great benefit 
of our system of Cold Medicated Inhalation in curing him whoxx in the third 
and last stages of Consumption. 

"Sherburne, Vt., January 6th, 1862. 

11 My Dear Sir: When I first visited your Institution, four years ago last fall, 
I was very much emaciated and debilitated. I had very little hope of ever being 
any better. My mother died with the Consumption when I was seven years 
old. I presumed that I had a predisposition, by inheritance, to the same disease, 
which had advanced to a confirmed Consumption in myself, developed by im- 
proper living and repeated colds. I had then a bad cough, which had been 
upon me for years. I expectorated much. I was troubled with pains 
in the chest, shortness of breathing, occasional night-sweats, cold chills, and 
hectic fever. I was able to make but little physical exertion. Before applying 
to you I had made use of almost every nostrum which came to my notice, and 
had been treated by several old-school physicians, not only without success, but 
additional aggravation of my case. Even you yourself, after minute examination 
of my lungs with the stethoscope, and testing them on your Pulmometer, find- 
ing my vital capacity very small, and a large cavern in one lung, doubted whether 
I would be able to live through another winter as hard as we have them in Ver- 
mont, but gave it as your opinion that if I would leave Vermont and go to a 
temperate climate, that you would be enabled to arrest the farther progress of 
my disease by your system of treatment — by inhalation, combined with tonics 
and energizing remedies. Having but little hope myself of ever being better if 
I remained in the North, I placed myself under your care, with the firm expect- 
ation of being obliged to go South. But in a few weeks your treatment had 
benefited me so much, had reduced the cough and irritation in my lungs, im- 
proved my general health and strength to such an extent, that I felt so much 
encouraged, I wrote you in the winter, leaving it for your decision whether I 
should go South or not. You advised me, with directions given, to remain at 
home and prosecute the treatment. I have done so, more or less, up to this 
time, at intervals, for four years, and I can assure you now that I am soundly 
and thoroughly cured, as far as having any evidence of ulceration, or caverns in 
the lungs, or indications of a consumptive nature — so much so, that I am enabled 
to pursue an active mercantile business, which taxes both mental and physical 
faculties quite severely. From the results of your treatment upon myself, I 
have sent numerous other patients to you, who also can testify to the same 
beneficial results in their respective persons. 

" With sincere gratitude I acknowledge you my benefactor, and I hope your 
improved and widely disseminated system of treatment and your great skill may 
be universally acknowledged. Your obedient servant, 

OTIS WALKER. 

44 To Dr. Andrew Stone." 

We have simply introduced this one certificate, in the opening por- 
tion of this treatise, merely for the purpose of giving encouragement to 
some desponding patient. But read further in the body of the work 
the numerous testimonials that we there publish, after having pre- 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION". 9 

viously given undoubted testimony from quoted authority of medical 
men of standing in various parts of the world, and its perfect cura- 
bility by the resources of nature herself, when not thwarted by allo- 
pathic treatment. Bat every invalid whose hopes have hitherto been 
blighted by false assurances, and who had quite abandoned the idea 
that they could ever be cured, let him be encouraged that there is still 
a chance for restoration. 

Note. — Invalids at a distance wishing to consult us by letter, should send for 
printed interrogatories ; they can, at the same time, if they wish to expedite the 
treatment, state the symptoms of their case in brief yet plain language. They 
will be greatly aided by looking over the following form for reporting case and 
symptoms. 

FORM OF REPORT. 

For the Assistance of Patients in Consulting the Physician of the Institution, 
by Correspondence. All Communications must be addressed to Andrew 
Stone, M.D., No. 96 Fifth Street, Troy, N. Y. 

DIRECTIONS. 

If the patients complaint be obviously confined to a single system, 
if for instance, he have an affection of the chest, the organs of re- 
spiration and circulation, then he will give particular informa- 
tion on the several points mentioned under the head of that system 
to which his complaint belongs. He can speak of his nervous 
system, whether strong, weak, or excitable / so also of the digestive 
system, and read through each system carefully, thereby he will be 
reminded of any symptom he is subject to. 

Information having reference to the sort of constitution 
should be furnished in every case, for a knowledge of the sort of 
constitution is just as necessary to safe, correct, and effective prac- 
tice, as a knowledge of the disease itself. 

When the disorder is in the respiratory and circulating system, 
then all the particular information required under the head of 
that system must be furnished, and other symptoms which may 
belong- to any other system. 

It will most commonly happen that symptoms will be experienced 
in two or three different systems. Those symptoms of course 
must be reported. 

When the malady seems to belong to the nervous system, the di- 
gestive system will generally be disordered also. And when it 
seems to belong to the digestive system, the nervous system will also 
be disturbed. In either case, therefore, the particular informs- 



10 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

turn sought, as it regards both these systems, should always he re- 
jiorted, in order to enable the physician to determine in %ohich of 
the two systems the root of the matter lies, for the root may exist, 
and most commonly does in one of these systems, while the symp- 
toms are chiefly experienced in the other. 

Li all important cases it is always best to send a small two- 
ounce vial of the early morning water, by post or by express, in a 
small tin or wooden case, for analysis. But in dropsy, liver dis- 
ease, heart disease, head disease, jaundice, and kidney or bladder 
disease, or disease of the sexual organs, it is absolutely necessary. 

Age? Sex? Hight? Weight? Married? Residence? Post 
Office ? Town ? County, and State ? 

INFORMATION HAVING REFERENCE TO THE SOVt OF CONSTITUTION : 

Past habits of life ? Past state of general health ? 
Diseases or injuries previous to present complaint ? 
Health of family, including parents, brothers, sisters ? 
Causes of death in family ? 
Consumption, Scrofula, or Cancer in family ? 
Probable causes, moral or physical, of present malady ? 
Slight or stout figure ? Short neck ? 
Full, red, flushed, or thin, pallid face ? 
Any enlarged glands, scars, or eruptions on the skin ? 
Color and texture of the skin ? Color of the eyes ? 
Color and texture of the hair ? Upper lip — full or thin ? 
Finger-nails — remarkably thin or brittle, or hooked over the finger- 
ends ? 
Teeth — well-formed and even — distorted or roughened ? 

Information having reference to Particular Diseases : 

Any position in standing, lying in bed, stooping, or otherwise, 
which is uneasy or painful ? 

Integuments and Appendages : 

Temperature of skin — hot or cool ? 

Moist, or dry and harsh ? 

State of eyelids ? 

Any swelling or puffiness, especially about the ankles, which 

leaves a pit on pressure ? 
Any ulcerations, abscess, or tumor ? 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 11 

The Nervous System : 

Form and size of the head — any peculiarity ? 

Spine — straight or crooked ? 

Pain ? Giddiness ? Sensations in the head or spine ? 

State of the pupil of the eye — size of a pea or of a pin's head ? 

Does it readily contract when exposed to strong light ? 

Does it readily dilate when examined in the dusk ? 

Any remarkable change in intellect ? Temper ? Disposition ? 

Is the memory impaired ? 

Any difficulty in any of the mechanical motions of any of the 
limbs ? Any peculiarity or loss of sensation ? 

Any defect or peculiarity of vision ? Any numbness ? 

Any defect or peculiarity of hearing ? Noises in the head ? 

Unnatural smells in the nose ? Tastes in the mouth ? 

Despondency ? Dislike of society ? 

Any impairment in the power of reading, thinking, writing, or 
mental application ? Dreamy sleep ? 

Any fault of any kind, not here mentioned, either ki general or 
special sensation ? 

Any distortion of features ? Ever had fits ? 

When and what kind of fits ? 

Ever hysterical ? Does one eyelid droop over the eye lower than 
the other ? Any difficulty in articulating words, or other pe- 
culiarity in speech ? 

Respiratory and Circulating System : 

Full and broad, or narrow, contracted chest ? 

Pain ? Peculiarity of voice ? Difficulty of breathing ? 

Cough ? Of what kind ? At what times chiefly ? Expectora- 
tion ? Of what kind ? Spitting of blood — past or present ? 
Palpitation of heart ? When chiefly ? 

Speed and character of pulse before rising, and in the evening ? 
Circulation languid or strong ? 

Any blueness of lips or cheeks ? Or puffiness of the face ? 

Digestive System : 

Any peculiarity in form of abdomen ? Pain ? 

Tenderness on pressure ? Distension ? 

Appetite ? Nausea ? Vomiting ? State of tongue ? 

Appearance of mouth and throat inside ? Are they remarkably 
red ? Any ulcers in them ? 

State of bowels with reference to the frequency of their evacu- 
ation without medicine ? 



12 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

How often do you take aperient pills or laxatives ? Appearance 

and character of the dejections ? 
Piles ? Falling of the bowels ? Rupture ? Ulceration of the 

rectum or lower bowel ? 

Uiuxo-Gexital System : 

» 

Difficulty or pain in relieving the bladder or urinating ? 

Character and appearance of the water ? 

Pain in region of the kidneys or bladder ? 

Falling of the womb ? Natural secretions right ? Any non- 
natural secretions, as leucorrhea or whites ? Natural secre- 
tions ? Any regular monthly, or the periodical sickness ? Mis- 
carriages ? 
Muscular and Bony System, including Joints and Spine. 

Pain? Stiffness? Swelling? Distortions? "Wasting? Weak- 
ness? Back, Loins, or Spine? Contractions? Walking 
powers ? Ever had Gout or Rheumatic fever ? 

History of origin with date of present malady, and order of suc- 
cession of symptoms. 

Present most prominent symptoms. 

Youth affected with nervous debility and diseases peculiar to an abuse 
of the sexual organs, in either sex, will be aided in obtaining from the 
Institution the necessary interrogatories ; so also in reading the author's 
book on the Causes of Premature Decay of Youth. 

Every applicant will inclose return stamp or stamps, to prepay the 
postage on letters of inquiry, reports, or interrogatories. The sum of 
three dollars must accompany all packages of urine for analysis and 
report, which sum will apply as so much paid on regular fee of treat- 
ment, if subsequently coming under treatment. 



Every patient is assured that sacred regard will be had to the 
trust reposed or confided to us. 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 13 



Motives for adopting Pulmonary and Chest Diseases as a 
Specialty in our Professional Practice. 

We have investigated the subject of Pulmonary Consumption with 
an anxiety no other physician can have that has not been placed in 
the same physical condition that we have been — which we have 
alluded to at some length or detail in the body of this work — namely, 
the inheritance, from both father and mother, of two of the most 
fatal and inveterate forms of consumption that ever afflicted mankind, 
and which manifested itself in our own person in early childhood, in 
the form of hemorrhage and incipient tubercular deposits ; and again, 
after having recovered from them, being afflicted twice with dropsical 
effusions into the cavity of the chest, so extensively that we were 
nearly suffocated. And yet it has been our fortune, perhaps, for suffer- 
ing humanity for ages to come, that we have now soundly recovered 
from all these attacks. Fortunate — why? Because this condition 
of suffering in our own person led us to adopt the system of medical 
treatment that would seem to be in harmony with the laws of health 
and the rational dictates of nature. But, after studying its hygiene 
and topography — as far as a change from our cold, bleak climate of 
the North to the tropical climate of the South is concerned — and for 
this and numerous other reasons, we repeat, that it is fortunate for 
suffering humanity that we have been thus afflicted, namely, to dis- 
prove in our own person, in the first place, and subsequently in the 
success of our own practice, the fatal doctrine, which has ever prevailed 
among old-school physicians generally, respecting the non-curability 
of Pulmonary Consumption when fully set up in the system ; and, in 
the second place, that no aid of art, as far as medicines are concerned, 
could be of any avail in arresting its progress ; but their only encour- 
agement to their patients, when consulted seasonably, was a change 
from a cold to a warm climate. Thousands of poor, suffering mortals, 
by adopting such advice, have been expatriated from their homes and 
their country, and induced to go among strangers, with enfeebled 
and prostrated energies, frequently without being accompanied by a 
single friend to cheer or to care for them. And then, when they 



14 PULMONAKY CONSUMPTION. 

found themselves in such a debilitated and prostrated condition that 
they needed the best of nursing and the best of care, all they realized 
was the cold, indifferent services bought by money. We have wit- 
nessed many such ourselves, while residing in Florida, who had been 
induced to leave their homes in such an advanced stage of their dis- 
sease, that no physician possessing the least modicum of humanity 
would have ever advised them to the adoption of such a course. Such, 
we say, we have seen prostrated among strangers, and buried by the 
cold hand of charity, without a single friend to console them in their 
last moments or shed one tear over their graves. 

We have proved, therefore, by our own experience in a tropical 
clime, that, instead of being beneficial to the majority of consump- 
tives, it only hastens their progress to the tomb. In this opinion we 
are fully corroborated by Sir James Clark, physician to Queen Vic- 
toria, who himself resided and practiced ten years in Rome, and 
tested the climate of Italy, and gives it as his decided opinion, from 
this experience, that a resort to a southern or tropical climate will 
never cure Tubercular Consumption ; and he warns such invalids not 
to leave the comforts of their own homes to go among strangers, 
where they will be subjected to many privations and inconveniences 
that will only serve to develop more rapidly the fatal stages of the 
disease. 

To further test the point of change of climate as a curative agent 
for Tubercular Consumption, we have not only resided in the Floridas, 
and seen unfavorable effects of a tropical climate upon Northern con- 
stitutions, but we have also resided and practiced nine years in the 
Western States in a malarious atmosphere, which many are aware, is 
another one of the old-school doctrines for the cure of Tubercular 
Consumption. We will not here go into the details of this philo- 
sophy, only to say that it was built upon supposition — namely, that the 
imbibition or inhaling of one poison, as that of miasm, would be the 
means of arresting this tubercular disease in the system and in the 
lungs, and which, we suppose, was based upon the principle of taking 
the hair of the same dog that inflicted the wound — which doctrine is 
equally as fatal and far more dangerous, as far as its immediate 
destructive effects upon the system is concerned, than the disease 
which it sought to cure. So strongly illustrative was this in our 
own experience among the hundreds of cases that we were called 
in our Western practice to see and prescribe for, that had been 
troubled formerly with pulmonary symptoms, and had measurably 
acquiesced to the change of the climate — yet many of them fell a 
sacrifice to the malarious diseases in their most malignant and deadly 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 15 

form ; and such were its effects upon our own constitution, in de- 
veloping all its varied forms of remittent and intermittent and bilious 
fever, chills and fever, biliary and liver difficulties, and so aggravated 
and intense was the suffering derived from them, that our former 
prostration in earlier life by hemorrhage and pulmonary affections was 
as but a drop to the bucket ; and such were its effects upon our con- 
stitution, that we were obliged to abandon the climate and all that we 
had earned for nine years to restore a shattered constitution. 

From the experience that we have had, therefore, in our own per- 
son, the reader will readily perceive that we are qualified to give none 
other but judicious advice. Having, in the first place, been endangered 
seriously by allopathic treatment, we could not, of course, have any 
faith ourselves in that mode of treatment for curing Pulmonary Con- 
sumption. Indeed, it has been an instrument of the most fatal cha- ' 
racter ; it has been but an interference with nature herself to thwart 
and interrupt her resources, which would otherwise have been all- 
sufficient, in hundreds of cases, had they been left alone, to have 
restored the patient, but, by their meddlesome interference and the 
prostrating, devitalizing nature of their remedies, caused their victims 
to die seeundem artem. 

We were led, in the early part of our practice, to investigate the 
curability of Pulmonary Consumption. We found that it was the 
opinion of Laennec, of Louis, of Andrell, of Clarke, of Scudamore, of 
Bennett, and others of Europe, that hundreds of cases of Tubercular 
Consumption were proved to have been cured by nature herself, un- 
aided by medication. Being convinced, by these facts, that nature did 
cure many cases when left to her own resources, was sufficient evidence 
to our mind that she, when aided by the judicious assistance of art — by 
a rational system of treatment, based upon correct principles, in har- 
mony with the laws of hygiene — would render Consumption as curable 
as any other disease. Reasoning from these premises, some twelve 
years ago, that a doctrine so unreasonable and preposterous in its na- 
ture, hitherto inculcated by the old-school notions, namely : of giving 
medicines into the stomach to cure a disease only situated in the lungs 
and air-passages, — for it must be readily perceived by every one hav- 
ing any physiological knowledge of the organs of respiration, that no 
medical agent, given into the stomach, could reach the lungs, unless 
very indirectly and uncertainly through the medium of the circula- 
tion, — we have, therefore, devised a system, entirely new and original 
with us, of giving medicines by inhaling them in an atmospheric forim 
in the shape of vapors. 



16 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

Our system is a wonderful improvement upon the old system of in- 
haling steam and warm medicated vapors advised by the ancients, and 
which had for centuries fell into disuse, in so far as we have conceived 
and perfected the method of giving our vapors and medicines in a cool 
form, the natural temperature of the atmosphere, which renders them 
tonic and restorative, and prevents the liability to catch cold. The 
hot vapors, on the contrary, for the most part, relax and open the 
membranes of the air-passages and the lungs, so that patients are 
more susceptible to colds and catarrhs and to the changes of the 
atmosphere. 




Method of inhaling Dr. Stone's cool or warm and thermal system of Medi- 
cated Vapors, as given by the Troy LUNG AND HYGIENIC INSTITUTE. 

Since practicing our method of cold medicated inhalation, we have 
succeeded in curing hundreds of cases of Consumption, combining the 
various forms of laryngial, bronchial and tubercular ; together with 
asthma in its most inveterate nature, both spasmodic and nervous ; 
proving, therefore, the perfect curability of Consumption and those 
diseases which are so prevalent in the United States, which lead direct- 
ly to develop Consumption, namely, catarrhs, laryngitis, and bronchitis. 
We were induced, some eight years since, to establish an Institution, 
to combine every facility and every agent that art or ingenuity could 
devise, for the successful treatment of that numerous class of diseases 
throughout the country. Being aware that physicians in the more re- 
mote country towns and hamlets are yet unprogressive and of the old- 
fogy school, clinging to their old and dangerous doctrines, and unpos- 
sessed of the facilities for perfect diagnosis, and for a more rational 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 



17 



and successful treatment in those places, we have so perfectly arranged 
our system of treatment, that we can send it to all parts of the coun- 
try, and thus treat patients with the same success at their homes as 
though they were with us at the Institution. 

This last proposition to the reader or patient at a distance, who may 
not have the opportunity of visiting and consulting us personally, may 
be received with some degree of caution or skepticism ; but we assure 
him, or her, as the case may be, that it is strictly true. Our scientific 
investigations in the chemistry of the blood and accurate knowledge of 
the component principles of the human system, in health and also in 
disease, gives us the certain knowledge of determining, by analysis of 
the urine, the nature and seat of every disease, with far more certainty 
than it could be determined by a simple, personal, ocular inspection of 
the patient ; for the very reason that every poisonous and unnatural 
element existing in the blood will be discovered on the analysis, and 
those morbid principles obtained therefrom are then brought under a 
most powerful microscope, which determines its nature to a moral 
certainty. 

The doctrine of urinary pa- 
thology has received, within a 
few years, the attention of some 
of the most able minds in Europe ; 
among others are Sir Ben. Bro- 
die, Bence Jones, and the late 
Dr. Golding Bird. These men 
have written and published their 
scientific researches in this de- 
partment, and have proved, by 
their labors, that this method of 
investigation of diseases of the 
blood, and all diseases of a 
chronic nature, are alone to be 
relied upon, not only to deter- 
mine accurately their causes and 
extent, but as being absolutely 
necessary to shape scientifically 
the rational method of therapeu- 
tics or cure. 




Specimens of Phosphates, Triple Phosphates, 
Urate of Ammonia, Uric Acid, and other 
deposits discovered in the Urine, as they 
appear under our microscope, after the an- 



18 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 



It is the microscope 
that has thrown such 
wonderful light upon 
the cause of Tuber- 
cular Consumption ; 
for, before the micro- 
scope and chemical 
analysis were brought 
to bear upon tuber- 
cular or scrofulous de- 
posits, the theory that 
emanated from medi- 
cal men, which filled 
volumes, would, if now 
read, known and 
adopted as formerly, 
consign their authors 
to eternal ignominy 
for their absurdity and 
their fatality. It is the 
microscope, therefore, 
that has demonstrated 
the nature and cause 
of Tubercular Con- 
sumption, Scrofula, 
and other malignant 
and fatal diseases of 
the blood. Since the 
discovery of the mi- 
croscope, the doctrine 
of the curability of 
Pulmonary Consump- 
tion is now proclaim- 
ed, as we have before 
said, by the most emi- 
nent living medical 
men, not only in Eu- 
rope but in the United 
States. 




Microscope used by the Institution in analysis and scien- 
tific investigation. 



To make our treatment successful to those patients who are at a 
distance, we afford them the scientific means of investigating the true 
condition of their case, namely, first, by analysis of the urinary, san- 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION". 



19 



guinis or blood urine, that is first passed in the morning, being se- 
creted from the blood after the digestion of the food of the preceding 
day. In the second place, we learn every symptom and feature of 
their case by a series of printed interrogatories, prepared so plainly 
and definitely that every patient can reply to them with clearness and 
certainty. 

In addition to the explicit directions for inhalation and medical 
treatment, a perfect system of hygiene is written out or otherwise pre- 
pared in print, for every patient to follow. These embody the neces- 
sity of pure air being breathed by the patient in his sleeping apart- 
ments, the temperature of his room and the manner of equalizing and 
sustaining the natural temperature of the body under circumstances 
of intense cold, or the fickleness of our climate ; the food that it is 
absolutely necessary for the system to have, in order to supply the 
natural elements to be possessed by the constitution, to overcome dis- 
ease and to afford resources to heal the ulcers or caverns, if they have 
formed in the lungs. His clothing ; his exercises, either passive or 
active ; and, his habits — are given him. 

In addition to the medical or hygienic treatment, and to supply him 
with the balmy atmosphere of a Southern clime, in his own Northern 
home, we devise a method of preparing a medicated air-chamber, by 

which the patient not 
only is enabled to in- 
hale a healthy, soft, 
balmy atmosphere in 
his own room, but 
this atmosphere is at 
the same time impreg- 
nated or saturated 
^ with soothing, stimu- 
lating, or healing me- 
dical agents, which he 
inhales in his natural 
breathing, from the 
atmosphere of the 
room, and which serve 
to soothe and quiet 
the irritation and cure 
every morbid condi- 
tion of the mucous 
membranes and 
glands of the air-pas„ 




Medicated Air-chamber in the Institution, and such as 
is devised for each patient at their homes. 



20 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

sages ; thus they stimulate the ulcerated cavities, (if formed,) and put 
them in a condition for the resources of the constitution to heal. 

Under this system of treatment, the patient can enjoy himself, sur- 
rounded by his friends and his family and all the social comforts of 
home, and read the newspapers of the day, or, if able, carry on his 
literary pursuits at the same time, without trouble or taxation, and be 
breathing the healing, curative atmosphere of his room at the same 
time ! 

What a wonderful improvement is this system of treatment com- 
pared with that of twenty years since ! a method which I re- 
gret to say is still practiced by allopathic and conservative physicians 
— namely, consigning their patients to a hopeless grave, or prescribing 
their sickening and prostrating drugs, and falsely feeding his hopes, in 
order to make their bill larger, and when he becomes so debilitated as 
to risk their reputation, they send him to a foreign clime to die, thus 
escaping the censure that might otherwise await them had he died at 
home. 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

The insidious and fatal disease, Consumption", is one whose terrible 
inflictions have rendered desolate so many thousands of happy homes ; 
have laid low so many warm hearts and bright prospects ; banished 
hope from our path and aim from our life ; a disease so all-prevailing 
that its slightest symptom is at once our first and worst dread. Of 
all the important diseases which afflict humanity in civilized countries, 
Pulmonary Consumption is the earliest and most universal ; the quiver 
of death has no arrow so fatal. In all ages it has been the giant foe 
of life. It blights the ruddy hue of youth, and cankers the damask 
cheek of beauty. It strikes down in the haunts of business and walks 
of pleasure. Terrible, insatiate tyrant, who can number thy victims ? 
"Why dost thou attack almost exclusively the fairest and loveliest of 
our species ? Why select blooming and beautiful youth, instead of 
haggard and exhausted age ? Why strike down those who are bound- 
ing blithely from the starting-post of life, rather than the decrepit 
beings tottering toward its goal? By what infernal subtlety hast 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 21 

thou contrived hitherto to baffle the profoundest skill of science ; to 
frustrate the uses of experience, and disclose thyself only when thou 
hast irretrievably secured thy victim, and thy fangs are crimsoned with 
its blood ? Destroying angel ! why art thou commissioned thus to smite 
down the first-born of agonized humanity ? What are the strange 
purposes of providence that thus letteth thee loose upon the objects 
of its infinite goodness ? Alas ! how many aching hearts have been 
agitated with these unanswerable questions ! How many myriads are 
yet to be wrung and tortured by them ! 

Such a disease forms so fearful a scourge, that no apology, therefore, 
need be offered for any judicious attempt, especially one founded upon 
years of personal experience, to mitigate the evils of this most de- 
structive of all disorders. And, however small may be the contribu- 
tion of my individual labor, I shall surely have more cause for satis- 
faction, in my own person, than he who sits down in despondency and 
inaction ; contented to acquiesce in the general opinion of the Old 
School — that for consumption there is no cure. 

The community, as well as the profession, have been so strongly im- 
pressed with the belief that this disease is so necessarily fatal, that any 
one who would maintain the opposite opinion, would, until within 
a short period of time, have been looked upon only in the light of a 
boasting pretender. So strongly was this opinion inherited from our 
ancestors, impressed upon the mind of the faculty, that their general 
and decided opinion — in cases that assumed consumptive traits of cha- 
racter — only results in the premature death of thousands, by an aban- 
donment of all timely and proper aid, thereby crushing their hoj)es of a 
cure ; and serve as a stumbling-block in the way of scientific inquiry 
into the true nature of Consumption, and its curability, which, by the 
energetic efforts of a few meritorious physicians, has been demonstrated 
to be as curable as other diseases. 

The present author has stronger motives than those that spring from 
exclusive devotion to one sect or school in medicine. He not only 
speaks from actual knowledge as to the recovery of hundreds of cases 
that have occurred in his own practice, but a recovery, also, of a most 
serious and menacing attack of Tubercular Consumption, combined 
with a prolonged hemorrhage of the lungs. He himself inherited, 
constitutionally, a strong predisposition to two of the most dangerous 
and destructive forms of Consumption ; namely, on the paternal side, 
that peculiar form which shows its effects throughout the whole circu- 
lation and constitution, and is first known in dropsical effusions, some- 
times at the ankles, at other times in the face and under the eyes, and, 
again, is rapidly followed by pleurisy or pneumonia, and a filling of 



22 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

the pleural cavity of the chest, that we denominate dropsy. Also, on 
his mother's side, he inherits that more common, yet equally fatal form 
— though more insidious and prolonged in producing its fatal results, 
before the constitution yields up its claim on life — known as Tubercu- 
lar Consumption, and characterized by a deposit of seed-like bodies in 
the lungs, which frequently produces hemorrhage, and terminates 
fatally that way ; or, in other cases, ulcerations, caverns, and conse- 
quent decomposition of the lungs themselves. 

The author, being delicate in childhood, but possessing an indomita- 
ble ambition, in his nature and temperament, by hard, physical exer- 
tion, at the early age of twelve years, ruptured a blood-vessel in the 
lungs, which immediately endangered his life. By this injury he was 
confined to bed for twelve weeks, and for that time defied the com- 
bined skill of what were judged to be three eminent physicians ; for 
the more they administered their drugs and medicines to effect a cure, 
the greater the prostration became, until, at length, he drooped so low, 
that for several days he could not articulate audibly. At this stage 
of his sickness, they lost confidence in their skill to effect a cure, and 
voluntarily yielded him up to the care and nursing of a kind mother. 

Now this prostration had been produced and kept up by the use of 
their irritating remedies, which served but to derange his stomach and 
destroy all relish for food or nourishment. His mother, conceiving 
the idea that if an appetite could be produced, there was yet suffi- 
cient stamina of constitution for his restoration, took upon herself the 
responsibility to administer an emetic for this purpose. It was a 
heroic undertaking, no doubt, on her part, yet it proved to be a judi- 
cious one, for its operation was so beneficial that his appetite was soon 
restored, and the digestive organs were clamorous for that natural nu- 
trition which they had so long rejected. In a few weeks, by the aid 
of good nursing, he was able once more to go out into the outer world, 
and to enjoy its varied scenery and invigorating breezes, which rapidly 
restored him to convalescence — though he remained an invalid for 
some seven or eight years. 

These paroxysms of sickness have proved to be an important epoch 
in his life ; for it was at this time — seeing the failure and want of skill 
on the part of his attending physicians — that he determined to devote 
his life to the healing art, as being a field that would afford him 
wonderful opportunities of developing his longing taste for science, 
and a realm for beneficent labor — to restore those who might be situ- 
ated as he had been to health. Suffice it to say, for the encourage- 
ment of consumptives, that he is now entirely cured from this pro- 
longed hemorrhage and incipient Tubercular Consumption, although 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 23 

he has been repeatedly prostrated from exposures incident upon a very 
extensive practice, and. has been twice prostrated with pleurisy and. 
dropsical effusions into the cavity of the chest. 

The peculiar form of Dropsical Consumption that he inherits from 
his father, as above described, is very dangerous and prostrating, and 
so sick was he with it, but six years since, that he was given up to 
die by two skillful attending physicians, yet he has recovered entirely 
from it. Through the convalescent stages of this disease, his vital 
capacity was diminished to seventy cubic inches ; but now, so complete 
is the recovery, notwithstanding an adhesion of the right lung to the 
side, which does not, however, prevent a full respiration, that he can 
now inhale two hundred and ten inches on the pulmometer, an instru- 
ment, by the way, invented by himself. 

But the author has other evidences of the curability of Tubercular 
Consumption, from among which he selects the case of his own mother* 
At the age of thirty-three years, she was prostrated extremely low 
with repeated hemorrhages from the lungs, and given up by her phy- 
sicians as being in the last, incurable stages of Tubercular Consumption, 
yet she ultimately recovered also, despite her physicians and their 
prostrating plan of treatment ; and subsequently died at the ripe old 
age of seventy years. 

These instances will prove that nature herself, when not molested 
and trammeled by the officious interference of art, and made worse 
by her bungling empiricism and paralyzed by the poisons too often 
administered to them, is all-sufficient to cure the very worst forms of 
Consumption. 



24 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 



Authority and Testimony of the Perfect Curability of Pul- 
monary Consumption, 

Before introducing the numerous testimonials that we possess of 
the perfect curability of Pulmonary and Bronchial Consumption by a 
modern improved system of treatment peculiar to our practice — and 
which we had the honor of introducing into the United States some 
fifteen years ago — to remove any skepticism on the part of the reader 
or invalid, who, from his situation, will of necessity feel a deep in- 
terest in the matter, we would say, that we are not governed in any 
way by pecuniary or mercenary motives in advocating its curability, 
which too many do for the sole purpose of filling their pockets, not 
only at the expense of their patrons, but they also blast all the ardent 
hopes that they have elicited from their false representations to them. 
We will, therefore, introduce the following testimonials from among 
medical men who stand or have stood at the head of their profession 
in various parts of the world — in France, England, Scotland, and in 
the United States — testimony to doubt which would be as unreason- 
able as to doubt one's own existence. 

If Pulmonary Consumption, in our own case, was cured by the 
natural healing and inherent power of the constitution, how much 
more so may it not be when nature's powers are judiciously aided by 
art, with a rational system of treatment well adapted to suit the symp 
toms and conditions of each case, and administered according to the 
natural functions of the lungs, namely, by inhalation. 

Laennec, one of the earliest writers, who enters very fully into the 
curability of Consumption, found, on examining the lungs of many 
persons who had died of other diseases, appearances such as would 
result from the healing of ulcers or burns on the surface of the body. 
He remarks : " After I was convinced of the possibility of cure in 
the case of ulceration of the lungs, I examined these remains more 
closely, and came to the conclusion, that in every case they might be 
cousidered as cicatrices." After detailing, at considerable length, the 
peculiarity of these appearances, he observes : " This fact seems to 
me to leave no doubt of the nature of these productions, and of the 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 25 

possibility of the healing of ulcers in the lungs." The foregoing 
observations, I think, prove that tubercles in the lungs are not a 
necessary and inevitable cause of death, and that cure may take place 
in two different ways after the formation of an ulcerous excavation — 
first, by the cavity becoming lined by a membrane ; and secondly, by 
the obliteration or closing up of the cavity by means of a cicatrix. 

These considerations ought to induce us to entertain hope in those 
cases of Consumption wherein we have reason to believe the greater 
portion of the lungs still admit air. Although we are certain that a 
person has an ulcerated cavity in the lungs, we are not equally certain 
that this will prove fatal. We may even be justified in believing that 
a case wherein all the ordinary symptoms of Consumption exist, in- 
cluding the indications of a cavity, is more favorable, providing the 
greater portion of the lungs is in other respects healthy, than one in 
which tubercle exists to any considerable extent without the presence 
of a cavity. 

In continuation of his argument on the curability of Consumption, 
after regretting that it was not in his power to lay before his readers 
a particular account of the early history of the cases in which these 
evidences of cure were observed, he presents the following : 

" An English gentleman, aged thirty-six, resident in Paris, had an 
attack of spitting blood, followed by a cough, at first dry, but in the 
course of a few weeks accompanied by expectoration. 

" To these symptoms were added well-marked hectic fever, consid- 
erable shortness of breath, copious night-sweats, emaciation, and de- 
bility. The spitting of blood returned in a slight degree now and then, 
and in December, which was with difficulty checked by astringents. 
In the beginning of January he was so much reduced, that both M. 
Halle and Bayle agreed with me in the opinion, that his death might 
be daily looked for. On the 15th of January, during a severe fit of 
coughing, and, after bringing up some blood, he expectorated a solid 
mass the size of a filbert, which, on examination, I found to be evidently 
a tubercle in the second stage, surrounded apparently by a portion of 
the pulmonary tissue. This patient remained in the same degree of 
extreme emaciation and debility during all January, being expected to 
die daily ; but in the beginning of February the perspirations and 
diarrhea ceased, the expectoration sensibly diminished, and the pulse, 
which had been constantly as high as one hundred and twenty, fell to 
ninety. The appetite returned, the patient began to move round his 
room, his emaciation became less, and against the end of the month 
his convalescence was evident. In the beginning of April he was per- 
fectly recovered, and his health has continued good ever since, without 



26 PULMONAKY CONSUMPTION. 

even the least cough, and without his being particularly guarded in 
his climate or regimen. 

" The second case is that of a gentleman, who, after having expe- 
rienced all the symptoms of Consumption in the greatest degree, per- 
fectly recovered. His respiration is now quite perfect through the 
whole chest, except at the top of the right lung, in which point it is 
totally wanting. On this account I am certain that this portion of the 
lung had been the seat of an ulcerous excavation, and that this has 
been replaced by a complete and solid cicatrix. The health of this 
gentleman continues good, although he often has occasion to speak in 
public. He has sometimes a little dry cough on the change of the 
weather, but takes cold very seldom. In conclusion, I think that the 
cure of Consumption, where the lungs are not completely disorganized 
ought not to be looked upon as at all impossible, in reference either to 
the nature of the disease or of the organ affected. The pulmonary 
tubercles differ in no respect from those found in scrofulous glands, 
and we know that the softening of these latter is frequently followed 
by a. perfect cure. On the other hand, the destruction of a part of the 
substance of the lungs is by no means necessarily mortal, since we 
know that even wounds of these organs are frequently cured, notwith- 
standing the unfavorable conditions with which they are necessarily 
complicated by the perforation of the wall of the chest and the admis- 
sion of air into the pleura." 

The author goes on to observe : " As soon as the hectic fever is 
established, wasting of the body becomes manifest, and makes more 
rapid progress, according as the perspiration, the expectoration, and 
the diarrhea are most abundant. In women and in persons of lym- 
phatic habit, the skin becomes white or bluish pale, with a very slight 
shade of lemon yellow. The emaciation then makes rapid progress 
toward complete marasmus, and presents to us the picture traced 
with such frightful truth by Aretaens. The nose becomes sharp and 
drawn ; the cheeks are prominent and red, and appear redder by con- 
trast with surrounding paleness ; the conjunction of the eyes is of a 
shining white, or with a shade of pearl-blue ; the cheeks are hollow ; 
the lips are retracted, and seem molded into a bitter smile ; the neck 
is oblique and impeded in its movements ; the shoulder-blades are pro- 
jected and winged ; the ribs become prominent, and the intercostal 
spaces sink in, particularly in the upper and fore parts of the chest. 
But neither this degree of emaciation, nor the symptoms just enume* 
rated, are proof s of an incurable disease. I have already noticed in- 
stances of cure after the patients had been reduced to the most extreme 
degree of emaciation /" 



PULMONAKY CONSUMPTION. 27 

The following testimony is borne by Dr. Forbes, Fellow of the 
Royal Society of England, and one of the principal editors of the 
British and Foreign Medical Review : 

" For as many as eight or ten examples of cicatrization of the lungs 
after tubercles," says Dr. Forbes, " I refer the reader to M. AndraPs 
Clinical Medicine, Book III. page 382. These cases are more extraor- 
dinary than those given by M. Laennec, and, together with them, 
put the fact of the healing of tuberculous excavations beyond all 
question." 

Dr. William Stokes, of the Meath Hospital, Ireland, a writer of 
celebrity on diseases of the chest, has some very apposite observa- 
tions on this subject. He says : 

"We may consider this treatment (of Consumption) under two 
heads, namely, the curative and the palliative ; the first, the attempt 
to eradicate the disease by active treatment ; the second, the relieving 
the various distressing symptoms of a hopeless Consumption. And, 
however differing in detail, the principles of both methods are the 
same, namely, the removal of the irritation from the lung, and the 
improvement of the general health. There can be no doubt that, as 
medicine advances, the cures of Consumption will be much more fre- 
quent ; its nature will be better understood, its first stages be more 
commonly discovered, and the disease be prevented from proceeding 
to incurable disorganization. Consumption may be separated into 
two classes — constitutional and accidental. In the first, tubercle 
supervenes, in persons strongly predisposed to it by hereditary pre- 
disposition or original conformation. In these the disease is generally 
rapid, invades both lungs, and is complicated with lesions of both 
systems. In the second, we meet the disease in persons not of the 
strumous diathesis, and who have no hereditary predisposition for 
tubercle. The disease results from a distinct local pulmonary irrita- 
tion, advances slowly, and the digestive and other systems show a 
great immunity from disease. In both cases ice may effect a cure ; 
but this result will be more often obtained in the latter than in the 
former class." 

Dr. Carswell, the eminent Professor of Pathological Anatomy in the 
London University, demonstrates in the most conclusive manner, not 
only the curability of Consumption, but also the frequent occurrence 
of cure. He observes : 

" The cure of a disease is indicated, first, by the cessation of those 
symptoms which are peculiar to it, or the restoration of those modifi- 
cations of function to which its existence gives rise ; secondly, by the 
disappearance of the local cause of the disease, or by the presence of 



28 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

certain lesions which are known to follow, as the consequence of such 
cause and of no other. Such indications of the case of tubercular dis- 
ease have been observed even in those organs (the lungs) in which 
this disease was long considered, and still is, by most medical men to 
prove inevitably fatal, even without ulceration or suppuration having 
taken place in them. The important fact of the curability of this 
disease has, in our opinion, been satisfactorily established by Laennec. 
All the physical signs of tubercular phthisis have been present, even 
those which indicate the presence of cicatrix in that portion of the 
lung in which the excavation had formerly existed." 

Having entered very fully into the description of the appearances 
in the lungs after the cure has taken place, he proceeds to speak of the 
extent to which the lung had been involved in the disease, in the in- 
stances that had fallen under his observation. " In some," he informs 
us, " the indications of disease were confined to a circumscribed por- . 
tion of the upper lobe of the lung ;" in others occupied " one half or 
two thirds" of a lobe. In many cases, the " whole upper lobe of one 
lung, and sometimes of both lungs, presented these appearances." 

" There must be few practical pathologists," he continues, " who 
will not consider these anatomical facts as evidence that Tubercular 
Consumption is a curable disease ! ~No objection has been brought 
forward, calculated in the slightest degree to invalidate the conclusion 
to which I have been led by the repeated observations of the changes 
we have described, namely, that these changes are positive proofs of 
the removal of the material element of the disease, and also of the 
cure of these lesions of structure to which it gives rise even at an ad- 
vanced period of its progress. We feel all the importance that would 
deservedly be attached to an accurate statement of the conditions 
under which the cure of tubercular phthisis was effected. On this 
point our information is vague and indefinite, but we can not, how- 
ever, avoid repeating the fact, that pathological anatomy has, per- 
haps, never afforded such conclusive evidence in proof of the cura- 
bility of a disease, as it has of that of Tubercular Consumption." 

Dr. Gerhard, of Philadelphia, in his work on diseases of the chest, 
not only affirms the curability of Consumption, but points out the 
different appearances which are presented in the lungs when recovery 
has taken place. After treating the subject in general terms, he ob- 
serves : " We have, however, more direct proofs of the curability of 
Consumption. That evidence is derived from pathological examina- 
tion, and of this there is no more striking illustration than the case 
of an eminent physician of this city, the late Dr. Parrish. It is well 
known that he regarded himself as laboring under Pulmonary Con- 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 29 

sumption at an early period of life. He recovered vigorous health, 
lived to the age of sixty, and finally died of disease of the kidneys." 
In this case, we are informed, there was every symptom and evidence 
of Consumption, and of its complete and radical cure. The Doctor 
not only survived his disease, but regained vigorous health, though 
tubercle had been deposited in his lungs, and had proceeded to ulcer- 
ation and the formation of cavities. 

The conclusion to which Dr. Gerhard has come, from the facts 
which have fallen under his observation, is, that "Consumption is 
strictly a curable disease" 

The late Dr. Swett, formerly one of the physicians of the New- 
York City Hospital, and Professor in the Chair of Medicine in the 
University Medical College, in his valuable Treatise on Diseases of 
the Chesty considers the curability of Consumption, and gives his 
opinion unhesitatingly in the affirmative. He asks the question : " Is 
Consumption a curable disease ? The general impression in the medi- 
cal profession," to its disgrace be it spoken, " is, that a patient with 
phthisis is doomed to death. If those cases only are considered in 
which the disease has so far advanced in its progress that it is easily 
distinguished, this opinion, on the whole, is well founded ; yet, even 
under these circumstances, unexpected recoveries take place. I shall 
never despair of the life of a patient with Consumption when I recol- 
lect what I once witnessed in this hospital." 

He then proceeds to detail the particulars of a case which presented 
all the symptoms of Consumption in its most advanced stage. So 
marked were the indications of a large cavity in the right lung, that 
he was accustomed to speak of the case as being one of an undoubted 
character. " On one occasion," he continues, " I found the patient in 
such a state of extreme exhaustion, that it seemed to me impossible 
to disturb him. He was bolstered up in bed, with his head resting on 
his shoulder, breathing with great difficulty, bathed in perspiration, 
and with a feeble and rapid pulse. He looked like a dying man. The 
next day my attendance ceased." On the doctor's return, at the end 
of two months, he found this dying man was so far recovered as to be 
able to walk about, and continued steadily to improve. He then goes 
on to tell us, that during the past fifteen years he has known many 
persons who had all the symptoms of Consumption in advanced stages, 
yet finally recovered. And again : " For the past fifteen years I have 
been in the habit of examining the lungs of all my patients, dying of 
every form of disease, for traces of phthisis that had been cured. I 
have been astonished at the number of cases which have presented 
evidences of this favorable result." 



30 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

With this weight of testimony in support of the curability of the 
disease, we look in vain through the several works from which I have 
quoted for one that can point out the means by which that cure can 
be effected. Most writers give to nature the credit of accomplishing 
the recovery when it does really occur. But if Consumption be cur- 
able by the operations of nature, in even a single instance after it has 
reached its worst stages, when the lungs are broken down into cavi- 
ties, it must surely be within the reach of art to aid nature so far as 
materially to increase the frequency of such recoveries. Every phy- 
sician who has read deeply the human system, has learned that it is 
but the province of our art to assist the efforts of nature — to remove 
obstruction— to lighten the burden which oppresses the diseased organ 
— to remove those influences which feed the malady, and thus allow 
the Great Physician, acting through the agency of those vital and im- 
mutable laws which he has implanted in our being, to restore the lost 
balance and recall the harmonious action of all the organs of the body. 

Having proved that Consumption has been again and again cured, 
and by evidence of the most positive and indubitable character, estab- 
lished the frequent occurrence of such recoveries, we feel that this 
vexed matter should be considered as placed forever at rest. It may 
be excusable for those who have not had much experience in the 
chamber of sickness, and even for creditable old matrons who have 
spent their lives in nursing the sick, and yet, throughout that long 
period, have not known one case of recovery, though they have ad- 
minstered the potions prescribed by a score of learned doctors — it 
may be excusable, I say, for these to deny the curability of Consump- 
tion/ but for physicians to do so is without palliation. If they believe 
it to be incurable, then they are ignorant ; and for ignorance such as 
this, where life is at stake, the largest charity has no excuse to offer. 
If they, on the other hand, believe it curable, and yet deny such to be 
the case because they know not the means, then are they false to their 
professional brethren whose treatment has been attended with more 
success ; false to the profession to which they belong, (for they deny 
what it has proved,) and false to their patients, whom they deceive 
until the disease has reached a stage when deception is no longer pos- 
sible, and then proclaim its hopeless character, weakening the last hold 
of their victims on life, and depressing the mind to utter despair. 

If you are an invalid, there is a safe rule to guide you in your judg- 
ment, and one to which the physician has no right to object. It is 
this : You have diseased lungs, and, to attain recovery, are about to 
seek medical advice. Among the physicians of your acquaintance 
there may be some who do not believe Consumption can be cured. 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 31 

Flee from such as you would from certain destruction, from the em- 
bodiment of all evil. Had one patient, by their administrations, been 
rescued from the grave, this belief would vanish ; and the physician 
who, during his practice, has not saved one, is an unsafe pilot through 
the storm on the troubled sea over which the consumptive must pass. 
On the other hand, those who admit the curability of Consumption 
should be able to refer to those whom they have been instrumental in 
rescuing from the grave, after unequivocal symptoms of this terrible 
malady had proclaimed themselves. 

We here append a few cases to show to the reader how perfectly 
curable is Tubercular and Bronchial Consumption, aided by our 
modern and rational system of treatment, by introducing the medica- 
tion directly to the seat of disease, in the form of vapor, inhaled at 
the natural temperature. 

CASE 2. 

" To Dr. Andrew Stone, Physician to the Troy Lung and Hygienic Institute : 

" My Dear Sir : Having received great benefit from your treatment by in- 
haling cold medicated vapors, I am desirous of making it known for the 
benefit of all those who may be similarly affected. For eighteen months and 
upward I was very much troubled with affections of the throat and lungs, 
which gave me much uneasiness, trouble, and pain at times. la the mean time, 
losing a brother by Consumption or disease of the lungs, I became anxious for 
my own safety, and had embarked for New-York to obtain medical relief and 
counsel there ; but on my way put up at the Mansion House in Troy— where 
you then resided and had your office — and learned there of your great success 
and skill in treating consumption and throat diseases. I was induced to con- 
sult you, and being convinced, from your scientific manner of examining the 
chest, that you understood my case, I put myself under your care, and 
adopted your method of treatment by inhaling medicated vapors into the lungs 
and the air-passages, the seat of my disease. And now, sir, it is with the 
deepest sense of gratitude that I inform you that I am entirely recovered. 

"Our climate, near the St. Lawrence, being latitude 45°, is particularly 
hard and trying in the winter season for diseases of this nature. I have 
passed through some three or four winters since I came under your care 
without any relapse or renewed irritation therefrom. , I consider my cure 
permanent, and attribute it to your new system of treatment and your skillful 
management of my case. I permit you, hereby, to refer any one to me you 
please for my approbation and encouragement of its good results. 
" I am, dear sir, yours very truly, 

"Lemuel F. Perry. 

"Perry's Mills, Clinton Co., N. Y." 



32 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

CASE 3. 

"To Dr. Andrew Stone, Physician to the Troy Lung and Hygienic Institute: 

" My Dear Sir : Having received the greatest benefit from inhaling medica- 
ted vapors, under your care and professional attention, I wish to bear testimony 
to its good results. 

" One year ago this present summer, my health was extremely impaired 
by my occupation and profession — being that of compositor and printer. My 
lungs troubled me very much, and I suffered great pain in them, with difficulty 
of breathing ; my vital capacity and strength was very much impaired, and I 
was extremely feeble and emaciated. I consulted you, and, although a perfect 
stranger to me, you had the honesty to tell me that it was beyond your power 
or system of treatment to restore me unless I gave up my business and kept 
myself in the open air, which I tlxen concluded to do. I put myself under 
your care, and, after adopting your system of cold medicated inhalation, my 
health rapidly improved, with all corresponding symptoms — increasing the 
vital capacity of my lungs one hundred cubic inches in four months' time, as 
proved by your pulmometer. 

"I have the utmost confidence in your treatment of pulmonary and throat 
affections by medicated inhalation — in fact, it is the only treatment that looks 
rational to me, as being founded on physiological principles, namely, to reach 
them oy direct medication. 

" Owing to my own carelessness, and not rigidly observing the cautious and 
wholesome hygienic rules that you gave me, I incurred some relapses, which I 
ultimately recovered from. I mention this as being my fault, and not any 
thing against your very successful system of treatment ; for many of your 
enemies, stung at your successful and growing fame, have endeavored to use 
this to your disadvantage, in the same way that true merit always meets with 
persecutions. But, my friend, be not discouraged. So long as you pursue the 
same generous disinterestedness, as I know you now do to all your patients, to 
inform them that their ills proceed from the direct infringement of the laws of 
health, you must prosper and obtain success, for it is promised in the pro- 
vidences of moral rectitude. 

"I permit you to refer any inquirers to me, and also the publication of this 
letter as a testimony of your treatment and skill in the healing art. 

"Very truly yours, 

"Abram O'Donnel, 

"Troy,N.Y." 

Note. — It is now four years, since the 9th of July, 1857, that Mr. 
O'Donnel came under our care. He is now entirely cured of the 
severe chest complaints that then afflicted him, as he has informed us 
but a few days since, and is acting in the capacity of foreman for 
Scribner & Co., Troy, N". Y., where he can be seen or referred to. 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 33 



SYMPTOMS OF TUBERCULAR CONSUMPTION. 

"Writers, generally, have enumerated among the more prominent 
symptoms of Tubercular Consumption, a short, dry, hacking cough. 
However much cough may be an attendant in some cases and stages 
of Tubercular Consumption, it is not a uniform symptom; in many 
cases where it attends the patient as a symptom, it is only manifested 
in the last stages of the disease. Hence, many victims of Consump- 
tion — that have far advanced in its progress, and are suffering materially 
from ill-health, from lassitude, or general debility — on seeking our 
advice, have often been led to say (and they try even to forestall our 
opinion at the first outset of their examination) that nothing ails their 
lungs — they can not be consumptive, because they have no cough ! 
This is the reply met with by every physician of experience ; and we 
have met with this reply in thousands of instances, in our own expe- 
rience, in examining invalids and consumptive patients. Hence, this 
notion, held out by physicians generally, is thought to be necessary as 
a symptom by people universally ; namely, that to be consumptive, 
one must have a cough, which has been the means of leading thousands 
astray, by deterring them from seeking timely advice and aid that 
might otherwise have saved them from a premature grave. Cough is 
not the first symptom of Tubercular Consumption, in the large major- 
ity of cases. This fact can not be too forcibly impressed upon the 
minds of the reader and the patient ; for, says a late writer, " in- 
stances occur where the cough is but trifling through the whole course 
of the disease, and also where it does not come on until its latest stages. 
Cases have often happened, indeed, where there has been either no 
cough at all, or not until a few days prior to dissolution. Such, to be 
sure, are exceptions to the ordinary course of Consumption, yet im- 
portant to be noticed, since cough is so generally regarded as essential 
to its existence. How often the expression is heard from the lips of 
those wasting away under this disease : * Why, I am sure I can not 
be in a Consumption, for I have no cough? " 

The malady is not to be known by the cough, then, merely. How 
3 



34 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

then shall we know the condition of the patient, or what constitutes 
Tubercular Consumption ? We reply, that it can be known only by a 
careful review and enumeration of all the symptoms manifested which 
indicate a departure from health. Among the more prominent symp- 
toms of Tubercular Consumption, stands foremost a general emacia- 
tion of the body, loss of flesh ; the victim shows evidence of bad 
nourishment, innutrition — the want of healthy digestion and assimila- 
tion of food. If the appetite is good, and food is used, it does not 
seem to nourish or to build up the tissues of the body. General de- 
bility ensues ; the victim is easily exhausted on making any great 
exertion, especially if this exertion consists in ascending an eminence 
or a flight of stairs hurriedly ; shortness of breathing is easily pro- 
duced ; the heart is excited to undue emotion and palpitation ; and 
the patient, or victim's strength is easily exhausted. Coldness of the 
feet and extremities attend all this class of cases ; but frequently are 
alternated by sensations of burning heat in the soles of the feet and 
palms of the hands. For the most part of the day, the temperature 
of the body, especially in the limbs, will be a long way below par, 
that is, below the natural temperature of the blood. This often is the 
case, from infancy upward. Hemorrhage, or bleeding of the lungs, 
attends many cases of Tubercular Consumption, and sometimes is 
among the earliest symptoms, and the first to excite any fears or 
alarm. But hemorrhage, or bleeding of the lungs, according to the 
statistics of Louis and others, only occurs in about sixty per cent. 
That was in France. In our own practice in the United States, we 
have noticed, in our own records, that spitting of blood does not 
exceed more than forty per cent, and, in the majority of cases that we 
have seen, only manifests itself in the third stage of the disease ; 
namely, when the lungs are studded with tubercles, and in a soften- 
ing process. 

Bronchitis, or Bronchial Consumption, is very prevalent in the 
United States ; and spitting of blood, from congestion of the super- 
ficial blood-vessels that line the membranes of the throat and air- 
passages, occurs so frequently in the latter disease, that it has been 
confounded by the Old-School physicians, and the victims them- 
selves, with Tubercular Consumption, when the bleeding, in such 
cases, was not indicative of any tubercles in the lungs whatever. Be 
it understood, once and for all, that Bronchitis, Laryngitis, and in- 
flammation of the throat and air-passages — which is peculiarly a 
national malady and universal disease — is not to be confounded with 
Tubercular Consumption. It is a complaint, however, that allures 
many victims, from the general consideration of its harmlessness, 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 35 

from a timely cure, thinking that it will wear itself out, which is the 
popular notion, when it invariably terminates as fatal and is as incur- 
able, when let alone, as Tubercular Consumption. We shall dwell 
more at length upon this latter affection of the throat and lungs in 
its appropriate section, but merely mention this here to disabuse the 
mind of the reader — the victim of Tubercular Consumption — that the 
two diseases are as wide apart and as different in their nature as Dys- 
pepsia is from Bilious Fever. However, we admit that all the symp- 
toms attending an acute or chronic Catarrh, inflammation of the 
fauces, throat, and air-passages, mask and cover up Tubercular Con- 
sumption in its earlier stages, especially if the victim of Bronchitis 
or throat disease, inherits, by parentage, any tendency or predispo- 
sition to Tubercular or Scrofulous Consumption, which is the case in 
the large majority of instances ; for in the United States the tendency 
to Tubercular Consumption is inherited, and if not inherited, it is a 
disease easily acquired, and easily developed by the pernicious hab- 
its of dress and living so generally practiced in our country ; 
hence, where there is any liability, from parentage, to Tubercular 
Consumption, although tubercles may not have been deposited in the 
lungs previous to taking on the catarrhal inflammation, which has 
resulted in the bronchial tubes, the latter affection has invariably 
developed the latent tubercular disposition. 

Here we would remark, as before stated, that there is no one disease 
so common in the United States as catarrhal and bronchial affections ; 
and we would caution all those having any prior predisposition to 
tubercular disease, by parentage, not to consider an acute catarrh, or 
a throat disease harmless, or as something that will wear itself out — 
self-curative ; for surely it will invariably terminate fatally, if they act 
upon this principle. Indeed, in all cases of strumous or scrofulous 
diathesis, cases of impoverished blood, want of positive vigor of con- 
stitution — under existing habits and circumstances of dress and living, 
so characteristic of our people — no one class of diseases become so 
uniformly fatal as catarrhal and bronchial affections. Spitting of 
blood is a very common symptom in the latter disease ; hence, it can 
not be decided from this manifestation alone, that the patient has 
tubercles in the lungs, without a proper physical examination by the 
Stethoscope and the Pulmometer. The reader will observe by this, 
then, that giving dry statistics in regard to the number of cases of 
spitting of blood that occur, can be no certain data on which to deter- 
mine the true condition of the lungs ; for it ever has, on the part of 
Old-School physicians, been confounded, as we have aimed to con- 
vey in the preceding paragraph, with the raising of blood which 



36 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

occurs in catarrhal and bronchial affections, in congestion of the lungs 
as the consequence of pneumonia ; hence, the symptom in itself, without 
a very discriminating diagnosis made by the Pulmometer, will be 
vague and uncertain. In Catarrhal and Bronchial Consumption, the 
raising of blood is curative in its nature ; for it only, as we have 
before said, comes from the little delicate vessels which line the 
mucous membranes of the throat and bronchial tubes, and is curative, 
in so far as it unloads the congested or over-distended condition of 
those blood-vessels. Hence, many patients are excited to a great and 
needless alarm when they raise blood, thinking that it comes from the 
lungs proper, the air-cells, and is the certain omen of Tubercular Con- 
sumption. It should excite no fears whatever under proper and 
judicious treatment. Why? Because it is curative in its nature. 
On the other hand, should it be an indication of tubercular deposits 
in the lungs or air-cells, it is one of the most alarming features of the 
true condition of the patient. The reader will see by this, then, that 
many symptoms, aggravated and alarming under some circumstances, 
are harmless under others, and that they are nothing, in themselves, 
but external manifestations, only to be determined by a very judi- 
cious and scientific examination on the part of the experienced 
physician. 

Extreme loss of flesh and emaciation, attended by shortness of 
breath and great debility, pallor of the countenance and lips, cold- 
ness of the extremities — all are indicative of tubercular deposit in the 
lungs. But even these, like spitting of blood, are not unvarying 
symptoms of Tubercular Consumption. Why? Because diseases 
change just in proportion to place, habits, and modes of living. 
Hence, we have many other diseases of a very alarming nature, and 
fatal in their tendency, involving a great emaciation of the body, 
extreme nervous debility, palpitation of the heart, shortness of breath, 
hurried breathing, almost to suffocation, on the slightest exertion, like 
going up a hill or flight of stairs, or under the slightest perturbation 
of mind, excitement of the passions, or fear, and yet not proceed 
from tubercular deposit in the lungs. We allude here to that now 
all-prevailing class of maladies, which we have termed in another 
little work of ours " On the Causes of the Early Physical Degeneracy 
of American People " — Nervous Debility, and which have their origin 
in other organs of the body ; involving the passions, in their early 
development, to an inordinate excitement and indulgence, as being the 
primary cause of this extensive emaciation and debility. 

Well, what does all this indicate to the reader — what is its true 
meaning ? It means just this : that there is no symptom in itself, or 



PULMONAKY CONSUMPTION. 37 

class of symptoms, but what are vague, indefinite, and involve much 
uncertainty, as to the true condition of the patient, respecting tuber- 
cular disease of the lungs, as to what organ or set of organs may be 
affected, to develop them, without a very scientific, careful and dis- 
criminating examination on the part of the scientific physician, who is 
well read and posted in his profession. Whereas cough, especially a 
dry, short, hacking one, which attends a patient, particularly on rising 
in the morning, may be strongly indicative of tubercular deposit in 
the lungs in many cases, yet we see precisely the same symptom, and 
the same form of cough which proceeds from nervous debility, or 
excitability of some organ or organs combined ; nervous Dyspepsia, 
for instance, an affection of the liver, or merely a bronchial mucous 
congestion, or congestion of the tonsillary glands in the throat. As 
we advance farther with the symptoms of Tubercular Consumption, 
we find that, in the more confirmed stages, Hectic Fever, manifested at 
night, or through the day, burning of the palms of the hands and 
soles of the feet, alternated by chills, cold extremities, night-sweats, 
and obstinate Diarrhea. But we have again to say, in qualification 
of this latter class of symptoms which peculiarly characterize Tuber- 
cular Consumption, that they characterize other forms of disease, and 
diseases of other organs when the lungs are not affected with tuber- 
cles at all. 

It is a very alarming symptom, when we see a comparatively stout 
man, or a healthy female, commence to bleed hurriedly from the mouth, 
and, in a very short time, lose from one teacupful to two pints of 
clear, florid blood. As it is alarming to the victim himself, so it is 
very alarming to the observer, out of sympathy. "What can be more 
alarming, knowing, as we all do, that our strength and our life exist 
in the blood ! To see it run from the lungs, apparently at a rapid 
rate — at a rate threatening suffocation — without any very evident 
cause, but some slight exertion. A case like this is very ominous, sus- 
picious, and alarming in its nature, (we have seen many such ;) and yet 
it does not indicate tubercular deposit in the lungs. Still, it is fair to 
suppose, on witnessing such a case, that it is strongly indicative of 
great tubercular deposit in the lungs, and that the immediate cause is, 
that a small artery, or branch of an artery, has been severed by the 
tubercle softening, or ulcerating, thus involving the integrity of the 
artery. Many such cases occur and are met with by the experienced 
physician, and, alarming as they are, many with proper care and treat- 
ment, ultimately recover. I have alluded to the recovery of my mo- 
ther as one, and to myself as another. 

It will be understood by the reader, that there are various forms of 



SS PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

Tubercular Consumption, as well as all other diseases. Some manifest 
themselves and run their course very speedily, being latent in their 
nature; that is, their predisposing and immediate exciting cause of 
death has been masked, hidden, in other words, latent to the perception 
of the victim himself and his friends. He or she has been in ordinary 
good health, in the common American acceptation of the term we 
mean ; for few Americans possess good, sound health ; that is, health 
here is the exception, and sickness the general rule. In fact, it is not 
fashionable to be healthy, especially with females. To be robust, 
strong, hearty, and hale ; to be well-developed in physique ; to be 
able to do a good day's work in the kitchen ; to do as our mothers did, 
would be the hight of vulgarity in their daughters, the females of the 
present day. Strength, every rational person knows, cceteris paribus^ 
every thing being equal, is an indication of good health. To be strong, 
muscular, and able to accomplish a good physical feat in walking, ex- 
ercising in the open air, or the domestic duties of the house and family, 
although it would be a sure evidence of good health, it would not be 
received as orthodox by American people. Why ? Because it is not 
fashionable ; it is not respectable, and it would be called vulgar. 

We repeat, then, that there are many, both male and female, in the 
enjoyment of apparent good health, suddenly taken down with a 
cough, night-sweats, hectic fever, cold chills, or bleeding from the 
lungs, without general emaciation of the body, or even extreme de- 
bility. The disease runs a rapid course, and death ensues, even with- 
out expectoration of pus or softened tubercular matter. We have 
seen many such cases, on a post-mortem examination, where the lungs 
have been found completely studded with tubercles ; but not even 
softened by ulceration. This is termed latent consumption, generally 
called galloping consumption, because it runs such a rapid, fearful 
course, from the first evident manifestation of any disease existing in 
the lungs. On the contrary, the majority of cases, as we began to 
indicate at first, proceed more moderately, occur in people that never 
had been well nourished or well developed physically and muscularly. 
They have been subject to cold feet and cold extremities. The tem- 
perature of the body has always been below its natural standard. 
They are not well nourished. They wear a pallid cast of countenance, 
and pale lip. Occasionally, a blush will appear npon one cheek, which, 
by the way, is not an indication of health, but, to the experienced eye, 
an indication of that worm that is gnawing within. This class of 
patients may also be troubled with hurried breathing, or shortness of 
breath, for years. They may pass through childhood in a sort of 
delicate manner, and after meeting with puberty, if a female, become 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 39 

for a while quite embonpoint, obtain their catemenia for a few times, 
or a year or two ; but the persistence in the general fashionable mode 
of clothing causes a suppression of this most important function, and 
throws the balance of the excitement to the lungs ; and the condition 
of their blood, the preponderance of albumen, over and above the 
vital principles, causes a rapid deposition of tubercular and scrofulous 
matter to take place, and they decline into consumption, which is 
characterized by the three well-marked stages, in which cough, hurried 
breathing, and general emaciation and debility may have remained for 
several years, and at length terminate in the expectoration of pus and 
the destruction of the lungs, in the manner that terminates the ma- 
jority of cases. 

Another class of symptoms that characterize a true Tubercular Con- 
sumption, or disposition of the blood and constitution, is seen in child- 
ren that are known and pronounced to be scrofulous, though it is 
sometimes the case that an infant or a child, dying with consumption, 
is found to have tubercles in the lungs. This is peculiar to those only 
that inherit a strong predisposition from their father or mother, or 
both combined. Children die every day, and at a melancholy and 
fearful rate, with tubercular disease ; but not with tubercles in the 
lungs. We mean that it is that peculiarity of constitution of the 
blood and the whole physical system which constitutes the tubercular 
diathesis or disposition, which, in after periods of life, deposits the 
tubercles in the lungs. In infants and in children, it is known by 
scrofula, by rickets, by curvature or ulceration of the spine, hip-joint 
disease, swelling of the glands of the throat, tumid eyelids, great 
aversion to light, flabby muscles, and ill-developed form physically ; 
coldness of the surface, paleness of the skin and countenance. Many 
of this class are subject to bad eruptions, and they take on scarlet 
fever, malignant sore throat, diphtheria, quinsy, membraneous croup, 
acute catarrh, pneumonia, or congestion of the lungs, and are con- 
signed to an early grave by some of these forms, which really is 
nothing more than Tubercular Consumption. 

The reader will understand by this, that they possess in the blood, 
in their physical constitution, all that embodiment of tubercle which, 
in the more advanced periods of life, gives rise to the deposit of 
tubercles in the lungs. But the force of manifestation of this dis- 
eased condition of the blood, and the digestive and assimilative func- 
tions of the body, is in the form that we have just enumerated. 

It is a prevailing opinion that Consumption is most common and 
fatal between the ages of twenty and thirty, or those above fifteen 
years even. But this is not correct ; for there is no period of human 



40 PULMONAKY CONSUMPTION. 

life during which Consumption is so fatal as between the ages of two 
and fifteen years. We mean in infants, and in children from two to 
five or eight years, that it assumes that peculiar form which causes 
death by some one of the diseases before enumerated, affecting either 
the lungs or other parts of the body in this fatal manner. To such an 
extent of fatality does this prevail among children, that a distinguished 
physician, the head of a hospital for children in Paris, has found that 
out of nine hundred and twenty deaths in children, five hundred and 
thirty-eight, more than one half, were from consumptive diseases, in 
some one of those forms. The statistics in the United States are 
equally as great ; especially at the time that I am now writing this 
still more, occurring in the shape of that more appalling, malignant 
form of Consumption known as acute diphtheria. 

It is now an every-day occurrence, in nearly all the Northern States, 
if not in all the United States, for whole families of children, six in 
numerous instances in succession, to be sw T ept off by this new form of 
disease, in the course of a week or ten days. 

So long as death comes so prematurely ; so long as children are so 
generally and inevitably doomed, either through willful ignorance or 
palpable neglect on the part of their parents, and their deaths must 
take place in such a melancholy, unsuspected a manner, it would be 
better for the victims themselves to meet it in the shape of this more 
sudden phenomena, (diphtheria,) though for the time being it might 
strike a more appalling blow to the parents themselves, than to have 
it occur a few years later, and have the cords of their existence gently 
loosened in that very gradual, insidious, but fatal manner, by the same 
fell destroyer, in the more lingering form of tubercular phthisis ; for, 
in either case, the cherished hopes and anticipations of fond joarents 
would alike be blasted. 

But we will pass, for the present, from this unhallowed " sacrifice 
of the innocents," by this horrible disease, on the part of their parents, 
as it were, to consider again some of the other features, obscure though 
they may be, of approaching Consumption. 

After the female merges from her childhood, she may have passed 
through the two first stages of dentition ; periods which sacrifice so 
many children in the form of convulsions, spasms, or dropsical effusions 
upon the brain or in the abdomen, which still arc but manifestations 
of the same great constitutional disease which we are aiming to de- 
pict, namely, Tubercular Phthisis. We repeat, after she has passed 
these two stages, yet with extreme delicacy and feebleness of health 
and constitution, she approaches the period of puberty, that important 
epoch in her life which, if the vital, physical stamina should be equal, 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 41 

is to fulfill one of the grandest and greatest functions of her nature — 
to wit : to establish her catemenia or her monthly periodical flow, 
which, in other words, but signifies that the ovaries are capable then 
of evolving an ovum or an egg. To be capable of becoming a mo- 
ther, and to fulfill her important function, is one of the grandest and 
noblest conceptions that the female mind is capable of. Who would 
not become a mother ? Who would not willingly pass through all 
the anxieties, and all the apprehensions of the preparatory course of 
evolving the germ of some future Washington ? of nursing and 
watching through his infant development and growth, the mental 
evolution and expansion, as the body grows to maturity ? Does not 
our country, amid this awful crisis, require such another genius, to 
navigate it safely through the tempestuous storm which now threatens 
to submerge it ? The charms of a healthy woman are certainly many 
and powerful ; the " expanding rose just bursting into beauty has an 
irresistible bewitchingness ; the blooming bride, led triumphant to the 
hymeneal altar, awakens admiration and interest ; the blushes of her 
cheek fill us with delight. But the charms of maternity are more sub- 
lime than all these. Heaven has imprinted on the mother's face some- 
thing beyond this world, something that claims kindred with the skies. 
The angelic smile, the tender look, the waking, watchful eye, which 
keeps its fond vigil over her slumbering babe, these are objects which 
neither the pencil nor chisel can touch, which poetry fails to exhaust, 
which the eloquent tongue in vain would eulogize, and on which all 
description is ineffective. In the heart of man lies this lovely picture ; 
it lives in his sympathies ; it reigns in his affections. His eye looks 
around in vain for such another object on earth. Maternity — ecstatic 
sound ! — so twined around our hearts that they must cease to throb 
ere we forget it. It is our first love ; it is a part of our religion. Na- 
ture has set the mother on such a pinnacle, that our infant eyes and 
arms are uplifted to it. We cling to it in manhood. We almost wor- 
ship it in old age." To develop, then, this important epoch in the ap- 
proaching mother, involves a momentous responsibility on the part of 
parents ; none other than to know and to realize their duty in regard 
to the physical education of their children, in order that they may be 
soundly developed and possessed constitutionally of the elementary 
materials which alone can build up and develop this animal structure 
and give force to every organ of the body. But to establish this one 
function in the daughter, how much of science, of intelligence, of 
moral consideration is involved ! To see her approaching this period, 
not only with pallor of countenance and faded cheek and lip, or even 
greenness or sallowness, which, to the professional eye, indicates too 



42 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

evidently that diseased condition of the system known as chlorosis or 
green sickness — she passes her fourteenth year, which, in the majority 
of cases, where nutrition and development are equal, when puberty 
should have been established, without her matrix or womb giving any 
indications of establishing this function. A tender mother, who has 
})assed through the experience of female life, knowing the conse- 
quences of such a suppressed function, is alone capable, in the sym- 
pathy of her nature, to fully comprehend the direful results. She 
grows tall and slim ; she is delicate and fragile ; her muscles are soft 
and flabby ; her voice is weak and trembling ; her breath is easily ex- 
hausted on the slightest exertion ; her heart is disturbed, and palpitates 
at the rustling of a leaij the sudden jar of a door, or approach of a per 
son unawares ; her sleep is restless ; she rises in the morning unre- 
freshed and listless ; she is destitute of a healthy appetite ; in fact, her 
appetite is most capricious, and craves only such articles of food which, 
to a healthy person, would excite the most extreme disgust ; for in- 
stance, a longing for plaster, for slate-pencils, clay, chalk, magnesia, 
coal, and elements too disgusting to name. To such an extent is the 
capriciousness of this appetite, that we have seen many a female pick 
plaster from the wall and eat it as a sweet morsel. She also becomes 
retiring in her disposition, fond of solitude ; is melancholy, downcast, 
and depressed in spirits ; in many instances even giving vent to sighs 
and moans ; indeed, with her, so great is the moral depression that not 
unfrequently attempts are made at suicide, and insanity, in some one 
of its forms, is a very common coincidence. She passes on, and this 
important function is not yet established, causing to parents who are 
thoughtful and reflecting an anxiety unfathomable. In a short time, 
cough ensues, hectic fever, and all the long and melancholy train 
that take place on the development and fatal termination of Tuber- 
cular Consumption — to wit, night-sweats, cold chills, often a swelling 
or bloating of the ankles, in a little time profuse expectoration of 
ulcerated matter from the lungs supervene, and death closes the 
mournful scene. These are but the symptoms of the too common and 
every-day occurrences of deaths by Consumption, that fell destroyer ! 
It is not our place in this chapter, dwelling on the symptoms of Con- 
sumption merely, to mention what are the causes which give rise to 
this condition of the constitution, like the one we have just depicted, 
for not being able to establish that great function, which is but a sure 
indication and evidence, where the constitution is rightly nourished 
and developed from infancy, of being the key-stone in the great arch 
of the perfection of female organism, which alone constitutes good 
health. 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 43 

There are other symptoms peculiar to this disease, which manifest 
themselves more frequently in males than in females. Whereas in 
females, frequently, it is denoted by a bright, intelligent, sparkling 
wishful, and hopeful eye, it is the reverse in males. There is a want 
of expression in the eye, a downcast look, a want of confidence, a 
sunken circle appears around the orbs ; extreme nervous tremor also 
attends its development, intense palpitation and nervous excitement — 
especially may this last affect the larynx and the throat, coming on 
suddenly under the least excitement, so much so as to cause that phe- 
nomena known as Astridula, or contracted state of the larynx, a dry 
hemming and effort to expectorate from the trachea, windpipe, or bron- 
chia, without being able to do so, and frequently loss of voice. This 
last chain of symptoms merely show how great is the nervous system 
involved, especially the nerves of the larynx, trachea, and respiratory 
organs. This latter class of symptoms is peculiar to this form of Con- 
sumption known as nervous debility, involving the pneumo-gastric 
nerve, the nerve leading both to the lungs and the stomach, likewise to 
the heart. Tubercular deposits make their appearance, in this last 
class of cases, from extreme exhaustion of the nerve and vital forces of 
the body. 

As we have before said of the young Miss, it does not apply in this 
chapter to give reasons for the causes of these many symptoms, and 
this peculiar form of Consumption. The reader will find it in its ap- 
propriate section. 

Indeed, so masked, hidden, imitative, modernized, to use an appro- 
priate term, have become the many indications for Consumption, in 
America, at least, was the reader to read the standard authors of Eu- 
rope upon Tubercular Consumption, with judgment and discrimination, 
he would be at a loss to apply them to the vacillating, mysterious symp- 
toms that they peculiarly assume in the United States. Does he ask 
why all this ? We would not wish to keep our readers in the dark ; 
but light must break in relation to the capacity of the recipient to 
bear it, without being blinded by its overwhelming effulgence. As 
Jesus of Nazareth said to his disciples before he was offered up to be 
sacrificed, " Many things more would I tell you, but ye are not now 
capable of receiving them." 

The author of this brief work has shared in the persecutions of this 
world, especially in the commencement of his professional life. While 
yet in his infancy, for reasons of ill-health, given in the preliminary 
chapter, he was thrown, with a debilitated and infirm constitution, 
upon the world, not only for a livelihood, but to satiate that longing 
thirst for knowledge, especially for that kind of knowledge that would 



4:4: PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

relieve the pains and aches, and mitigate the sufferings of his fellow- 
mortals. Hence, in adopting the principles of nature as his guide, he 
has ever come in contact with the prejudices of creeds, and wherever 
he has adopted a correct principle, in regard to the laws of life and 
health, as a matter of true therapeutics only, he has ever been subjected 
to the grossest persecutions that could emanate from a low, under- 
handed rivalry. 

In illustration of this point, then, we have ever maintained, and do 
now, that symptoms are not diseases ; they are only an indication of 
something back in the great chain of causes. In the early part of our 
professional career we were convinced of this, and stood alone in dis- 
seminating it to those who consulted us, and attempted to explain the 
causes for these many mysterious and intricate symptoms of the fell 
serpentine disease that lay there in ambush, long, long back in the 
great hidden chain of causes — ah ! back in the mind — moral causes ex- 
isting in the passions, which can not be explained in a word, but would 
require volumes, a life-long effort to depict to the perceptions of man- 
kind the causes of this premature death. This organism which God in 
his infinite wisdom has made, is so wonderful in its structure that it 
bids defiance even to the investigations of man, to faithfully fathom, in 
one short life, and which, to a reflective and comprehensive observer of 
this mysterious body of ours, is a sufficient indication that we should 
guard and develop it with the most scrupulous fidelity in order to have 
it to fulfill that aim and design of Omnipotent wisdom, of further de- 
veloping here in this earthly sphere that immortality which it contains, 
for nobler and higher purposes, than to accomplish its own destruction 
so sacrilegiously, so ignominiously, as we daily witness in the offering 
up and sacrifice of our children and friends, while but yet on the brink 
of human existence by their unhallowed pandering to appetite and 
passion. 

To talk about the symptoms of Tubercular Consumption without 
knowing the causes of the symptoms, would be as futile as for man to 
undertake, of himself, to organize a world or a cosmos out of the dark, 
mysterious chaos of those elements which once lay in the darkness of 
night, but which are now bounding through our veins and arteries, 
nourishing and enshrining, human intelligence, and subject to organic 
laws. 

When will American people divest themselves of the abuses of old 
allopathic ideas, namely, that symptoms in themselves are diseases ? 
We again repeat they are nothing but indications of something that 
lies behind. Suppose the lungs are filled with tubercles — suppose the 
throat and bronchial mucous surfaces are inflamed and deranged in 
their secretions and functions, likewise the stomach, the great labora- 



PULMONAKY CONSUMPTION. 45 

tory of the pabulum of life, the blood — ah ! and the heart, too, which 
is a great organ, comprising a series of combined muscles, which, like 
a powerful force-pump, carries it day and night, yet so mysteriously 
to the common observer, as those mysterious passions are the causes 
for the latent diseases that we have just depicted, during three-score 
years and ten, as it may be. What does it all mean ? If these organs, 
and this one important organ, is diseased in its function or its organism, 
and the victims die, as they do every day, and it is published in the 
newspapers, " Died of heart disease" — this is the grand verdict of the 
coroner's inquest ! Does it not leave every one as much in the dark 
as before, as to what caused the victims' hearts to be diseased ? 

So long as you will misuse the wonderful gifts of God, your intel- 
lect, comprehension, and reason in not studying and knowing what are 
the causes of these symptoms and the symptoms of Consumption, do 
you arrive any nearer at the cure ? It is an old adage, but neverthe- 
less true, " that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." 

People must learn, then, whether they learn it from the author as 
a progressive, innovative physician ; they must learn it, sooner or later, 
that physicians do not carry human health in their pockets or saddle- 
bags, nor do they, if they write a prescription in mongrel Latin, headed 
by the mysterious Ijfc , and finished with the equally as much mys- 
terious Q. S. for a tail, that it does not mean health. It would be a 
libel upon God Almighty himself to say so. People must and will 
understand that God, who made man in his own image, with this 
wonderful, mysterious organism, that health can only result from a 
harmonious action and exercise of every organ and function of this 
mysterious body ; that though they may " live as they list," and go on 
with all the sacrilegious abuses of these mysterious passions, intoxicate 
reason herself, and bring upon themselves " destruction by the works 
of their hands," and then think that they can go to an apothecary's shop 
with this mysterious recipe, to regain their lost health there, and thus 
compensate for violating the organic laws of life and health in this ig- 
nominious manner, or think of getting it from their old fogy physicians 
— I say it would be a libel upon Almighty God himself. 

Understand, then, as the emphatic gospel of nature, that human 
health is governed and controlled by inexorable laws ; for those laws 
were made by Omnipotence himself, and they can not be taken into 
our hands and suspended at our will, for the purpose of pandering to 
the gratification of our appetites and our passions, and at other times, 
when satiated, resumed again, as the will and act of divine wisdom, 
(emanating from that throne in heaven,) whose superior intelligence, 
before he created us, saw the beginning and end of human life and 
health in one harmonious chain. 



46 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

The mysterious passions of our nature that we have hinted at as 
being- the cause of our own destruction, were designed by a bountiful 
Providence equally as much for our happiness when kept in abeyance, 
and controlled by our reason. Such was the knowledge of human 
health and happiness in the days of the prophets, centuries before the 
Saviour himself. Is it not humiliating to learn that in this respect, we 
have not advanced to, much less beyond their knowledge ? " Seek not 
death in the errors of your life, and pull not upon yourselves destruc- 
tion with the works of your hands." 



"WHAT IS TUBERCULAR CONSUMPTION? 

Having stated in the preceding chapter what were some of the 
more prominent and ominous symptoms of the fell destroyer of man- 
kind, we now proceed to consider what is Tubercular Consumption, 
for we base our motives of writing particularly upon this fact, namely, 
that all persons should understand themselves in regard to their 
physical education — in regard to the causes and effects, and be capable 
of tracing in themselves, unaided by any physician, effects to their ap- 
propriate causes. But without their understanding what constitutes 
Tubercular Consumption and its many causes, the large majority of 
mankind would realize but little, we fear, in understanding the symp- 
toms alone ; for it ever has been, and will be hereafter the same case, 
a fact that mankind generally have neglected to attend to themselves 
in the incipient stage of this disease, when it is perfectly curable, and 
have only sought aid when it had run its course, and assumed some 
of its more aggravated conditions — generally in what we have de- 
nominated the third stage of the disease, when, for the most part it 
becomes incurable, for this reason, that the lungs themselves have be- 
come disorganized. Understand, therefore, what we mean as we 
carry you along with us — we mean to say that all forms of Consump- 
tion, and they are many, are curable by the skillful aid of science. 
When an organ is affected by the disease in its material structure, 
when the lungs are disorganized completely by the softening down of 
those tubercles, and the lun^s themselves have become ulcerated as 
the consequence, and the patient is expectorating continually his own 
lungs, then, in this condition, in the very large majority of instances, 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 



47 



it is beyond the reach of man to restore that structure which required 
omnipotent wisdom to devise. 

You will understand, then, that for the mass of the people it is ab- 
solutely necessary that they understand the causes for effects ; for the 
wisest method to cure is the removal or avoidance of a cause of the 
effects, bringing us to an old but true adage, namely, that " an ounce 
of prevention is worth a pound of cure." This is so in every disease, 
but still more strikingly so in regard to this fell destroyer of mankind 
— Consumption — for this very reason, that if people would avoid the 
causes, live as they should live, consistently with the laws of organic 
life, in three generations Tubercular Consumption could be entirely 
extinguished, in so far as it is now, in many instances, an inherited 
disease, for the reason that many victims of Tubercular Consump- 
tion inherit a predisposition to it on the part of their parents or an- 
cestors ; it is no evidence whatever that the malady is not acquired 
by pernicious habits of life, by a constant violation of the absolute laws 
of life and health. To such an extent is it contracted in this way, in 
the United States at least, that in more than one half the instances 
that we have witnessed, it has been the offspring of pernicious habits 
of life. So much, then, in regard to the importance of every one un- 
derstanding the cause of effects. 

Let us repeat, then, what is Tu- 
bercular Consumption ? Tubercles 
are little minute bodies, of a cheese 
or curd-like substance, deposited 
generally in the air-cells of the 
lungs. In their commencement 
they are extremely small, resem- 
bling millet-seeds, hence the name 
of miliary tubercles. They assume 
various colors, according to the dif- 
ferent processes and stages of their 
development, and the peculiar con- 
stitutional condition of the victim 
in whom they make their appear- 
ance. For the most part, they are 
grayish at the commencement ; as 
they progress they become the color 
of cheese, or yellowish in their na- 
ture at the time of softening. But 
tubercles, these hard seed like ex- 
traneous, or foreign substances that 
we see so generally in the lungs of 




Section of Lung, showing Tubercular de- 
posit and a cavern in the act of healing. 



48 PULMONAEY CONSUMPTION. 

people, and which, by common consent, constitutes Consumption, are 
not, by any means, confined to the lungs alone ; they are found in the 
brain, in the glands of the throat, and the mucous membranes and air- 
passages. In infants and children they are found extensively in the 
glands of the bowels throughout, especially that portion of the bowels 
known as the mesentery, and give rise to that tumid, glandular, hard 
formation of pus. In younger children this is called swelling of the 
mesenteric glands. They appear in other forms, in swelling of the 
different glands of the throat and neck ; they appear in the blood, and 
give rise to scrofulous ulceration of the spine, in hip-joint disease, in 
swellings of the knee, in dropsical effusions of the eyelids, oedema, or 
swelling of the ankles, which characterize many cases of Consumption. 
The reader, then, will perceive by this that Tubercular Consumption 
is not a disease by any means confined to the lungs alone, though' in 
our language, as we have previously expressed it, it manifests itself in 
the chest, and the lungs receive the onus or force of action. But why 
this comes in these instances is because they have weakened and con- 
taminated their lungs by the exclusion of pure air, by the compression 
of the chest and weakening and irritating their lungs, so much so, that 
they have only invited this insidious disease to locate in the lungs 
more than in the other organs of the body. But such is not the case 
in earlier life and in infancy, when the tender mother is suddenly called 
to see her offspring expire in violent convulsions and spasms, or is 
stricken clown, as it were, in a moment, with stupor, congestion of the 
brain, or dropsy of the brain, called by the faculty, who are ever tena- 
cious of making themselves appear wise by great names, so asjto keep 
the people more in ignorance, Hydrocephalus, a great name you will 
say, to express an effusion of water in the ventricles of the brain, and 
this is all it means ; equally so when the person is suffocated by water 
in the pleural cavity of the chest. The reader will recollect here that 
the author has mentioned that he had been twice to the gates of the 
grave with this peculiar form of Consumption, known as Hydro-thorax, 
or dropsy of the chest. Now, all these high-sounding and learned 
names mean nothing more or less than a tubercular or scrofulous de- 
posit in one or other of these vital organs of the body, which cause 
premature death in one or other of those mysterious forms of Con- 
sumption, for all belong to the same class and come in the same cate- 
gory. They exist in the great chain of cause and effect, and are traced 
back by pathologists and physiologists, and those that study animal 
chemistry under the use of the microscope, to a scrofulous condition 
of the blood, and that condition constitutes a tubercular deposit in the 
lungs. 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION". 49 

But the 'cute reader will ask the question : If tubercles are extran- 
eous and unnatural formations, and are deposited in these little hard 
semi-transparent seed, curd, cheese-like, or other formation of pus in 
the lungs, where do they come from ? why should they be deposited 
in the lungs ? or why exist in the body ? This is the grand and im- 
portant question ; for when this is defined, it tells the whole story com- 
pletely as to the cause of Tubercular Consumption. Before tubercles 
are deposited in the lungs or any part of the body, they exist in the 
blood in a fluid state, and they go the rounds of the blood, in the cir- 
culation, through every part of the physical organism, as often as the 
blood circulates through every artery and vein of the body, and it is 
said it does do so every three or four minutes, and thus are carried 
wherever the blood is capable of going, and why should it not be de- 
posited in the brain, in the bowels, in the larger cavities of the chest, 
in the throat, and other glands that line the mucous surfaces, not only 
of the respiratory organs, but the whole alimentary canal itself, which, 
in an adult, is thirty-four or six feet in length. 

The reader, then, will see the extent of surface and the extent in 
the physical structure upon which this morbid matter can be deposited, 
and take its deadly root. 

This, then, as we have before said, brings us to a most important 
consideration of our subject : What is the cause of this peculiar forma- 
tion existing in the blood before it is deposited into the lungs, or other 
parts of the body ? 

4 



50 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 



CAUSES OF TUBERCULAR CONSUMPTION. 

Amo^g the most prominent and general causes for this morbid con- 
dition of the blood, which constitutes the scrofulous or tubercular 
diathesis, is the breathing of bad, vitiated, or confined air. 

In the second place, the use of bad, pernicious diet — a diet not cal- 
culated to afford the material, nutritive elements designed by Omnipo- 
tent wisdom to build up the vital structure of man. 

In the third place, a direct and constant violation of the absolute 
laws of the physical organism, in relation to light and heat, tempera- 
ture, dress, and the external care and management of the body. 

In the fourth place, in the United States especially, the most gene- 
ral cause for the early decline and extensive ravages of Consumption, 
in all its various forms combined, we mean, is a perversion of the pro- 
pensities, and awful abuse of the body, by pandering to the passions 
in early childhood and in youth, and the abuses that result therefrom. 
To such an extent does this last-named cause prevail, in the United 
States, at least, that it should not be classed in reality in the fourth 
consideration of causes were it not, that we could not exist five 
minutes without air, yet, we hesitate not to say, that, though it 
operates insidiously, it is ultimately as fatal in causing the extinction 
of life, as though the victims were excluded from the air, and death 
was produced by immediate suffocation. In the first case it is more 
speedy, to be sure, but the procrastination in the other case involves 
untold suffering to the victim — sufferings and horrors that no pen can 
adequately describe, and these, in the first instance, he escapes, though 
the result in each case is the same. 

But the general reader, the invalid, and the victim of Tubercular 
Consumption, can not perceive the importance of maintaining a healthy 
function of the lungs and organs of respiration, without possessing 
some definite, comprehensive knowledge of their anatomical structure. 

To this end, to enable the reader to comprehend more easily, we 
introduce, by way of illustration, the annexed cut representing the 
lungs, the heart, and the organs of respiration and circulation com- 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 



51 



bined. The lungs are represented as two large lobes, situated on 
each side of the heart, filling, with the heart, the entire cavity of the 
bony chest. They are composed of minute air-cells. Their number 

has been computed 
by Keil, an anatom- 
ist much distinguish- 
ed for his attain- 
ments, at 1,744,000,- 
000 — many millions. 
A German anatomist, 
Lieberkuhn, repre- 
sents their extent of 
surface to be 20,000 
square feet. Now, a 
little reflection on the 
part of the reader 
will enable him to 
perceive that this 
wonderful structure 
of the lungs could 
not have been de- 
signed by Omnipo- 
tent wisdom other 
than to fulfill the 
most important pur- 
poses. The question arises, for what purpose was this intricate, ex- 
tensive structure designed ? We reply, as it is but too evident to 
every one if they would only take it into consideration, for the pur- 
pose of vitalizing and sustaining the physical body. But how is this 
done ? Every person knows that they must breathe, or else they 
would soon suffocate, but not one person in a thousand understands 
for what purpose they do breathe, or realizes what changes are pro- 
duced by breathing to sustain the body, and to maintain it in life and 
health. He will understand, therefore, that the lungs, the heart, the 
respiratory organs, and the circulating system are made in relation to 
the external law of the atmosphere, and the atmosphere must be 
inhaled in its purity, and constantly, to disengage from the blood the 
carbon or poisonous principles ; for after our food has entered the 
stomach, and has been converted into chyle, and becomes assimilated 
into the blood for the purpose of building up all the tissues of the 
body, and after this nutrition has been carried to every part of the 
body, through the circulating system, it becomes contaminated with 




52 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

carbon or other decomposed principles of the system. Therefore, it 
will be understood that the physical organism is constantly, every 
moment of our being, from the time of conception in the mother's 
womb, until death itself, undergoing decomposition, and that animal 
life and existence consist in a harmonious action of the vital and 
chemical principles. Nutrition is taken into the stomach, and con- 
verted, by the process above-named, if the organs are in a healthy 
condition to do so, for the purpose of sustaining this continued de- 
composition or wasting of the system, through the circulation of the 
blood. As the blood, in its rounds of circulation throughout the whole 
extent of the body, distributes its vitality and nutrition, it collects, 
at the same time, the worn-out, decomposed, and poisonous principles 
of the body, w T hich become again absorbed into the blood, and which, 
you will understand, is carbon, and is to be returned to the lungs, to 
be in turn disengaged through this large extent of surface of air-cells, 
in the shape of carbonic-acid gas. For though the principle of nutri- 
tion is converted into solids, muscles, nerve-tissue, the bony structure, 
cartilage, hair, and every part of the organization, it is again, after it has 
done its work, disengaged by the lungs in a gaseous form. But to 
one who has no knowledge of physiology — who has never considered 
nor studied the laws of life — this may appear wonderful — too wonder- 
ful even for their comprehension. But such is not the case, for it can 
be easily studied and understood by every one in a short space of 
time, provided they felt an interest in and the importance of doing so 
The way the process is completed is by the absorption of the oxygen 
of the atmosphere, through those delicate tissues of the air-cells of 
the lungs. The tissues themselves are so thin and so delicate, that at 
the same instant of time that they allow the external atmosphere or 
oxygen to pass in, they also permit the carbon to pass out or become 
disengaged through the same tissue, in the shape of carbonic-acid gas. 
And yet, while this process is going on, of liberating the carbon and 
imbibing the oxygen from the atmosphere, through this wonderfully 
delicate structure, if they are maintained in health and integrity, the 
circulation is kept up through all its parts in their appropriate number 
of vessels, without exudation. 

When the reader has a definite comprehension of this wonderful 
mechanism, the extent of its surface, its delicate nature, and that all 
these air-cells are permeated by arteries for the purpose, in the first 
instance, of oxygenating or vitalizing the blood, and, in the second, 
for again returning it, through the veins, to the same extent of surface, 
for the purpose of disengaging the poisonous, worn-out materials of 
the body, he can have some conception of the importance of this great 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 53 

vital function, at the same time the cause for tubercular deposit in 
the lungs, when the healthy function has been perverted by the de- 
privation of fresh air, and by the breathing of bad, poisonous, or 
confined air — by mechanical pressure upon the chest and compression 
of the lungs, thereby producing obstruction in the circulation, as well 
as compressing these delicate air-cells, so much so, that no circulation 
is carried to them, nor no disengagement of this carbon and poisonous 
material can take place throughout this extent of delicate surface. 
These delicate air-cells become filled and consolidated, and when so 
filled with tubercular deposit, become congested, or filled with blood 
from external cold, which repels the blood from their superficial ves- 
sels, and when this takes place, the lungs are no longer able to carry 
on their function of breathing air, and the victim becomes short- 
breathed or incapacitated for breathing at all. 

But the question arises here, what is the cause of this tubercular 
deposir, which, we have previously said, takes place in the blood ? 
The cause is depriving the lungs of fresh air and the exclusion of 
oxygen, which is the vitalizing principle of the blood, and which alone 
constitutes a healthy process of assimilation of our food into healthy 
blood, which only can be done on the surface of the air-cells. Want 
of breathing pure air, not breathing the requisite oxygen to vitalize 
the blood, the blood then becomes poisoned and incapable of longer 
sustaining the organism or building up its tissues by its appropriate 
elementary principles. It will be understood that this physical or- 
ganism is made up from sixty-four elements which the chemist 
calls primates. Among these sixty-four primary elements, albumen, 
fibrine, nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon are the principal, and stand 
foremost among the rest, and form the basis of the structure. The 
next important principles are phosphates and carbonates of lime and 
soda, with salts of potash, iron, and other materials. The carbon 
which exists in the fat of meat, in sugar, in starch, and what are 
called non-nitrogenous articles of food, are craved and taken into the 
stomach for the sole purpose of keeping up a combustion and fire in 
the system. This is why we require and crave the fat of meat, or 
carbon in some one of its forms, in cold weather and winter. It is 
for this reason that the Esquimaux takes his train and seal-oil, (for 
the want of which he would freeze,) namely, for the purpose of 
burning him up. The same combustion is kept up in our system, as 
in a stove, by the contact of oxygen through the lungs with the car- 
bon in the circulation. The stomach is where food is deposited — the 
lungs where it is burnt up. 

This process of combustion, again, is for the purpose of maintaining 



54 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

the natural temperature of the body, which is ninety-eight or one 
hundred degrees. The nitrogen and other materials mentioned, are 
to sustain and build up their appropriate organs and tissues of the 
body ; nitrogen is required to form muscle — phosphate to build up 
the brain and nerve system. It is highly essential, therefore, that 
they be taken in their appropriate quantity, and such food should be 
eaten as contains all these articles, or else the blood suffers for want 
of those appropriate elementary materials not being taken, or if 
taken, not digested and converted into healthy chyle, or healthily 
assimilated into blood ; it is this that constitutes and begets the form- 
ation of tubercles. This is the condition of the blood that we 'call 
tubercular, or, in other words, scrofulous diathesis ; for the scrofulous 
condition of the system, as we have before said, is the same as the 
tubercular condition — the one will cause the other — it is one and the 
same thing. It only deposits itself in the lungs because the lungs 
have been weakened and impaired in their structure and function by 
abuse, by perversion, by bad management, the exclusion of pure, 
and breathing of bad air — these are the causes which lead to their 
deposition in the lungs. In other instances, where other parts of 
the body are enfeebled and delicate, it takes its onus of action in the 
shape of abscesses, ulcerations of the spine, joints, or glands of the 
throat. 

But now we must go back a little, that the reader may not forget 
the importance of this wonderful structure that we began to describe. 
We have said that the lungs and respiratory organs were constructed 
in relation to the external law of the atmosphere, and for the express 
purpose of breathing air in its utmost purity, in order to vitalize and 
purify the blood. In order that this law shall be fulfilled, and the 
system maintained in health, it follows that the lungs must maintain 
their healthy function ; for, according to the extent that they are 
capable of fulfilling this function, to the same extent is the body main- 
tained in health. It is well known that, just in proportion to the depth 
and capacity of the lungs and vital organs of the body, is the body 
perfected in its structure and maintained and strength is developed. 
It is the ability to breathe deeply and extensively large quantities of air ? 
that gives force not only to ourselves but to every animal. It is this that 
gives swiftness to the race-horse ; it is this function, in perfection, that 
gives us power of endurance, or in other words, long wind. The birds 
that fly the most rapidly and the highest are known to have large, 
capacious lungs, in proportion to their bodies; and just in proportion to 
the capacity of their lungs, and their velocity of flight, is the rapidity 
of their breathing and the temperature of their blood increased ; so 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 55 

that the eagle, and many other birds, have a temperature of one hun- 
dred and six to one hundred and eight and one hundred and twelve de- 
grees. 

It follows, then, according to this law, that just in proportion as 
the lungs are obstructed and incapacitated in their function, by not 
using them properly, not inflating the air-cells, by artificial compression, 
bad posture, confinement of the chest, etc., so that the air is not in. 
haled ; then the blood becomes poisoned in its elements and diminished 
in its temperature ; hence the cause of diminished temperature in the 
feet, limbs, and surface of the scrofulous and consumptive. Every per- 
son is aware that when they are shut up closely and excluded from the 
external atmosphere, and inhale their own breath for a length of time, 
or other noxious gases, how important it is to have pure air, and they 
know, too, that suffocation or strangulation takes place by the reten- 
tion alone of this carbon and mephitic principle of the blood. Yet, 
seeing the great importance of fresh air, which God in his infinite wis- 
dom created and constituted the first grand principle of our physical 
life and existence, they will shut it out of their lungs in every conceiv- 
able manner, as though they taxed their ingenuity to devise means, by 
every nicety of art and construction, to shut God's atmosphere out of 
their lungs ! 

There is scarcely a father or mother — even in the light, and the 
knowledge of these truths, natural laws, and effects — but, what will 
retire at night in a little seven-by-nine bedroom, and not only slmt 
themselves up, but will also include two, three, sometimes five child- 
ren, all in this small room ! No window or door is opened for the 
admittance of air, and frequently every crack and chink are calked and 
stopped, to exclude this angel-messenger of life and health. They 
retire in good health, feeling well, in buoyancy of spirits ; they awake 
in the morning with extreme headache, swollen eyes, tumid faces, 
weak, debilitated, sickened, and incapacitated, as it were, to arise; 
and they will go on in this way night after night, day after day, year 
after year, without ever asking themselves the question, what can be 
the cause of all these pains, sudden depressions, and sickness ? So 
little reflection is used, though they know the facts, too, in regard to 
causes for effects. 

Every pair of lungs will inhale and exhaust sixty hogsheads of air 
in twenty-four hours. At each breath, when breathing is natural and 
healthy, with a full inflation of the lungs, a pint of air is taken in. 
Each person breathes naturally eighteen times in a minute. With 
the inhalation of this pint of air, a corresponding disengagement of 
a pint of carbonic-acid gas should be evolved from the lungs. Making 



56 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

the computation in cubic inches and cubic feet, how long would it take 
for one person, even in an ordinary bedroom, with the windows closed, 
after retiring at night, to consume every atom of pure air that is in 
the room ? One hour would not elapse ere the principal part of the 
vitality of such a room would be consumed by one person, and the re- 
mainder of the night, he would respire, over and over again, his own 
poisonous breath (carbonic-acid gas) back again into the lungs, to con- 
taminate the blood, and, after going the rounds of the circulation, 
poison the brain, lungs, and nervous system, and prostrate the whole 
vital energies. The little air that may find its way through the cracks 
and crevices, in many instances is barely sufficient to maintain life until 
morning. "What must be the consequence, then, where three or four 
occupy such a bedroom as is usually the case ? 

Here we have evidence, when reflection and reason are used, of the 
causes for Tubercular Consumption. Dr. George Combe mentions in 
his Constitution of Man, an instance of two sons, both of healthy 
parentage, that were thrown into Pulmonary Consumption in early 
life, (of which they died,) by sleeping in a little bed-closet, admitting 
air only through one pane of glass. 

But we need not go to Scotland to quote such authority ; we do so 
only because it gives weight with many. We find instances enough 
of this in every-day life, in almost every family and town throughout 
the whole United States. 

Seeing, then, that one third part of our physical existence is spent in 
sleep, and that air is just as necessary at night as in the day-time, we 
should be showing some wisdom to arrange our sleeping rooms so as 
to have them the largest in the house. Contrived according to scien- 
tific principles of ventilation, to secure a current of pure air through 
them continually, which can be done without any liability or exposure 
of the person to cold. But what is the case ? Houses are so con- 
structed that the sleeping apartments are made the smallest, and the 
parlors, which are occupied but a very little time, receiving a few 
fashionable visitors occasionally, are made large and airy, made to 
please the eyes of others and to gratify a perverted taste and the 
caprices of fashion, while the owners of them will go into a small, 
pent-up bedroom, to poison this organism which God has given them 
on trust, for the purpose of shuting out that vitality which he has 
every where so bountifully provided, without money and without 
price. 

It may be well to enforce upon the mind of the reader the great 
importance of fresh air, and, to show the fatality attending the exclusion 
of it from our houses, to mention the well-known instance of the black- 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 57 

hole in Calcutta, in which one hundred and forty-six British soldiers 
were imprisoned at night, in a room only eighteen feet square, having 
but one small window on one side, without any ventilation whatever ; 
of this number, twenty-three only remained alive in the morning ! 
Imagine what must have been their sufferings, shut up of a hot sum- 
mer's night, in the climate of Bengal, in a room eighteen feet in size ! 
Before the expiration of the first hour, the most intense alarm and ex- 
citement prevailed among the suffering, suffocating soldiers. But the 
tyrant who had incarcerated them was not capable of any commiser- 
ation for them, nor aroused to any exertions for their relief. History 
tells us that their sufferings were intense and agonizing in the extreme. 
But this only illustrates, in an aggravated manner, the principle that 
we have before mentioned, which nearly every father and mother in the 
community takes upon themselves to exercise toward their offspring, 
the exclusion of God's vital air from the lungs. 

Do Ave wonder, then, that we have Tubercular Consumption to the 
awful extent and fatality that we have it ? To such an extent will 
confined air generate the scrofulous diathesis, and cause tubercles to 
be deposited in the lungs, that cows kept in stalls, confined from the 
air, invariably have tubercles formed in their lungs. This is known to 
be the case in the city of New- York, where cows are kept in stalls, 
and fed on distillers' slops, for the purpose of supplying the citizens 
with milk. They become emaciated, debilitated and diseased, yet their 
milk is sold to feed and nourish children ; hence the tubercles are fed 
to children in the swill-milk of these diseased cows. Monkeys, tigers, 
lions, and other animals that are kept in menageries, all die from tuber- 
cles in the lungs, produced by inhaling confined air. 



58 PULMONAKY CONSUMPTION. 



%MI $tttk% 



Next in Importance to Pure Air for the Sustaining of our Phy- 
sical Existence come Heat and Light, 

The reader will start at this, if he stops and reflects, as he should 
do, upon the imperative requisites for sustaining physical existence. 
It is not nourishment that we most need after we are brought into this 
world. It is not food. Is it not warmth ? The infant can live many- 
hours without nourishment ; it can not live three minutes without air, 
as we have sufficiently shown. 

In the next place to air, then, it is warmth and temperature that 
must be sustained, or else, in a little while, fatal congestion and col- 
lapse would ensue. 

In a brief work like this, as we have before hinted, we can not stop 
to carry out in full detail (as we purpose doing in a larger work on 
The Science of Human Life and Physical Education) the various 
ways in which the laws of life are violated at the commencement even 
of our infant existence. 

One would not think, then, seeing the vital importance of the func- 
tions of the lungs, that our kind mother or nurse would begin the very 
first hour of our existence to compress the chest, confine the dia- 
phragm, and cramp the abdomen with a girdle or band, extended the 
fall length of the body, thereby preventing, in the large majority of 
instances, at the very onset of our infant life, the fall expansion of the 
lungs and the descent of the diaphragm. 

Upon this point we shall dwell at full length in the work just al- 
luded to, in which we shall explain and illustrate the many ingenuities 
of dress adopted from infancy through girlhood up to maturer years, 
to cramp and confine the chest, and distort it from that perfect, sym- 
metrical shape and form which nature gave it. We shall dwell upon 
the effects of the corset, the stays, the bust, the boards, whalebones, 
steel springs, eyelets, cords, and other paraphernalia, equal almost to 
that which rigs a ship designed to navigate the ocean. 

Ingenuity, as it were, in this department, has been taxed almost to 
exhaustion, to devise means to torture, contract, and pervert that beau- 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 59 

tiful symmetry made after the image of our mother, Eve, but which 
now can rarely be met with in the United States. Even the painter 
or artist, who needs a fine model to illustrate his work of art, has to 
cross the Atlantic and go to Italy to find a model of the Venus de 
Medici, who alone embodies a natural waist and chest. 

This may be thought a serious digression from the second position 
of causes which we had just commenced to explain. But it is not the 
case when you rightly understand that the maintenance of the heat of 
the body depends upon a full expansion of the chest, and the ability 
to breathe deeply ; for as we have before said, our food, when taken 
into the stomach, commonly generates heat or temperature to sustain 
the warmth of the body at the lungs. Then, I ask, if the chest is com- 
pressed and the lungs prevented from fulfilling their function, does it not 
necessarily follow, to a moral certainty, that temperature is not gene- 
rated, but arrested at once ? By this we design to show, in the second 
place, that two of the most important laws of our being are violated at 
the very first hour of our existence. The little being is ushered from 
its mother's womb, where it has been sustained by a temperature of 
one hundred and two degrees for nine months — most frequently birth 
takes place in winter and the colder seasons of the year — it is ushered 
from a temperature of one hundred and two degrees into existence 
when the temperature not unfrequently is at zero, or a long way below 
freezing-point out of doors, and we venture to say, in many houses it 
is at the freezing-point. Ah ! what a change ! Can it be realized ? 
Frequently the change is seventy degrees which this little offspring is 
subjected to in one moment of time. In many instances, also, its body 
often receives but the slightest amount of covering, not unfrequently 
not the least amount of flannel, but instead a cotton band or garment 
compressed around its body — its arms, extremities, and neck are left 
bare and uncovered. 

Let us pause for one moment and take into serious consideration 
the great and sudden change that this delicate offspring is subjected 
to in one moment of time. Let us pause, farther, and consider the 
awful responsibility on the parts of the parents who have been the 
means of ushering into physical life this innocent and dependent being. 
It has been propagated and produced here entirely unasked for by 
itself. It is helpless and at the mercy of those who have produced it, 
and into whose hands it falls. Let the mother of this delicate and de- 
pendent child conceive this. What must be her susceptibilities, and 
what would be the direful effects of such a sudden change upon her, 
in ordinary times, or even in child-birth, of being subjected in one 
moment of time to a change of fifty, sixty, or seventy degrees? I need 



60 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

not follow up this argument ; it can easily be tested and illustrated by 
every one individually, especially by those who are delicate, by step- 
ping suddenly from a warm bed or room heated at eighty, ninety, or 
a hundred degrees, oat of doors in the winter-time, when the ther- 
mometer stands at zero. Ah ! will you not reflect upon the awful re- 
sponsibility that you owe your offspring ? What right have you to be- 
come a mother and voluntarily be the means of bringing into existence 
an offspring unsolicited, and then jeopardize its life in this manner at 
the very brink of its existence ? 

After the sudden and serious depression of temperature that the 
infant has been subjected to, do we wonder that so many die in the 
early days of infantile life ? 

Every one should know that they are constituted in regard to a law 
of heat and temperature of 98° or 100°, and that in order to have 
health, develop healthy physical organism, and maintain a harmonious 
function of the organs of the body, it becomes absolutely necessary to 
maintain this temperature, and that in equanimity throughout our 
natural life. But I ask is this done in one instance in a thou sand — 
I had better say ten thousand ? 

No doubt infants and children, like adults, are occasionally over- 
heated. This is another abuse of the same law, in another form, and is 
no argument for the abuse of it on the opposite hand, by suddenly de- 
pressing this vital temperature, fighting against this absolute law of our 
being. But such is the case with every child. Every one knows that 
children are so dressed to maintain the whims and freaks of fashion and 
pride, that they are kept through infancy and childhood in a state of 
semi-nudity. The limbs, the extremities, and in the large majority of in- 
stances, the whole entire upper part of the chest — the seat of vitality — 
is exposed to the cold blasts of a wintry wind. Children are so dressed, 
and walk the streets with their blue, naked arms and legs, their blood 
all chilled and driven from the surface, to be carried to the heart and 
the lungs, to chill those organs so by the depression of this vital tem- 
perature ; this is constantly inculcated and carried out by vain, igno- 
rant, and arrogant mothers. 

In this manner, then, is the second great law of our physical life 
violated from the cradle, until the infant or the child, or perchance, if 
it struggles beyond childhood to adolescence, it is consigned to a pre- 
mature grave by Tubercular Consumption. 

It has been our duty many times, when in general practice, to be 
suddenly summoned from a warm bed in the middle of a winter's 
night, to see some child who had been suddenly attacked with the 
croup. Ah ! intelligent reader, do you know what is a croup ? Can 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 61 

you realize the untold miseries expressed in this one word ? At the 
mention of it, many and many a fond mother will start into tears, close 
her arms in anguish, and yearn for the little offspring that she had 
given birth to, that she had nurtured with the fondest hopes and an- 
ticipations of its future, when that offspring was suddenly cut down 
with this fatal destroyer — membranous croup. 

Well do I recollect, when very young and very delicate in health, I 
went with my preceptor to visit a child in the agonies of death from 
this disease. The child was nursed by an elder sister. The mother 
was one of those timid women who could not bear to see any suffering 
on the part of her children without much mental distraction ensuing 
at once — in other words, she had no fortitude to be a mother, conse- 
quently the care of this little sufferer devolved upon an elder sister. 
Well, myself and preceptor were over the cradle of this child, wit- 
nessing the heavings of its bosom gasping for breath, its counten- 
ance livid and swollen, and so great was its distress that it went into 
convulsions ; every muscle of its little body was rigid, its mouth and 
features distorted, its tongue protruding, its eyes turned as if in death 
itself, during the awful agonies it underwent in those convulsions that 
attend this horrid disease. For the moment, the sister gave vent to 
grief and tears ; the scene, for the moment, would have bid defiance 
to the pencil of the skillful artist ! For myself, being in such delicate 
health, it wrought upon my feelings, and so striking was the impres- 
sion which it made upon my young mind at the time, that it is not at 
present, nor ever will, I doubt, be erased. So intensely did this sight 
affect me at the time, that my youthful ardor for the profession which 
I had embraced was, for the time being, almost blunted. 

The reader, who feels interested, will ask the question, What is mem- 
braneous croup ? We have, in a preceding section, alluded to a dis- 
ease that is now sweeping off infants and children at a direful rate, 
under the name of diphtheria, and have taken occasion to say that this 
diphtheria was but another name for membraneous croup ; for, with 
some modifications, it is one and the same thing. We shall give a 
section upon this disease in this work, but will briefly say here, to 
satisfy the longings and expectations of the interested reader, that 
children are externally attacked with a violent inflammation, affecting 
the membranes of the throat, the larynx, the trachea or wind-pipe, 
and this inflammation is so intense that an exudation of lymph or 
fibrinous matter is constantly poured out from the mucous membranes 
and glands in such a manner that a new membrane, a false one, is 
rapidly formed. 

This disease, so very fatal, is only curable by the best and most 



62 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

skillful management, when taken in its early stages. But how does it 
produce death ? you will ask. It produces death in the same manner 
as though a ligature was put about the neck, and the person is suffo- 
cated thereby, by the prevention of any air entering into the lungs; 
just as the more lingering and silent form of Consumption is produced 
at later periods of life, when God's vital air has been shut out from 
the lungs and the chest, by the paraphernalia of art and the willful 
violation of this absolute law of our life, just as we have previously 
depicted. 

But this is not all ; the inflammatory process of the disease causes 
the most intense constitutional irritation and pain in all the other or- 
gans of the body. The brain and the whole nervous system is intensi- 
fied to a most exalted state of irritability ; hence, in the large majority 
of instances, children that die with croup, die in the agonies of con- 
vulsions, just as I have depicted in the case that I have alluded to 
before. This death occurs by this phenomenon of absolute suffocation, 
from the complete closure and blocking up of the trachea itself, by the 
false membranes, which is the inevitable result when convulsions do not 
occur to occasion it before. In either case, the reader may conceive 
something of what must be the agonies and sufferings of these little 
victims who die so hurriedly, so prematurely, by membraneous croup 
and diphtheria. So intense are their sufferings for hours, and in many 
instances days, before death puts an end to them. We have seen them 
gasping and struggling for breath, with an anxious and glaring eye, 
looking first to its mother, then the nurse, and then in every direction? 
even to its physician, with looks so intensified with expression, as if 
imploring that relief which science could not render. 

Ah ! mothers, parents, what untold horrors, agonies, and sufferings 
have you brought upon your offspring ! Unasked on their part, you 
have brought them into this world, and consigned them to all this 
suffering, by your willful neglect, and you are responsible for all these 
agonies and this untimely death. How ? By violating those laws 
that we have just mentioned, particularly the law of temperature ; for 
no child was ever attacked wdth membraneous croup or diphtheria, but 
what was allowed to take cold. How can it be otherwise, when kept 
in this state of semi-nudity in our cold and fickle climate ? 

God calls upon you to sustain the responsibility that you have taken 
upon yourselves, and to fulfill that responsibility in the obligations that 
you owe your offspring. This responsibility does not end, let me assure 
you, as the physical suffering and agonies of your offspring ends, 
namely, by the severing of its immortality from this tenement of clay. 
By such an early and awful doom, you inflict upon vour offspring and 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 63 

your children an injury which is not effaced even in its future spiritual 
existence ; for, in a word, every offspring and every child that goes so 
prematurely into the spiritual sphere, is unfitted by many years for 
that position to which they are so rapidly subjected. But I leave this 
part of your moral duty for your own reflections and your own elimi- 
nations, as it may be suited to each individual case. 

I have stated, in the preceding part of this section, that membrane- 
ous croup, that scrofula, and all the diseases of the blood that I there 
named, belong to the same great category that we are treating upon, 
and that they are connecting links in the same chain of causes that I 
have pointed out, in the blood, caused by a diminution of the temper- 
ature of the blood, chilling it, and producing a watery, albuminous 
condition, diminishing its fibrine, its healthy vitality — the red globules 
— its strength, and thereby producing a preponderance of this element, 
albumen, which has caused the death of your offspring in another form 
alone, by an exudation of it on the mucous surface, and produces stran- 
gulation in the shape of membranous croup, just in the same manner 
as it does in later periods of life, in tubercular deposition in the lungs, 
by this albuminous condition of the blood exuded out of its appropriate 
vessels, on account of its watery, chilled condition, and its not possess- 
ing its vital momentum of those properties which we have mentioned 
and illustrated. 

In thousands of instances, where infants do not die by the awful 
ravages of this frightful malady, they fall victims to other inflammatory 
diseases of the respiratory organs, as acute catarrh and bronchitis, as 
the consequence of violating this law of temperature and chilling of 
the blood, in the same manner. Of course, the extensive fatality in 
infantile life, in this manner, comes upon those delicate infants and 
children more particularly that inherit a predisposition to it on the 
part of their parents ;. hence their vital powers are feeble even in birth. 
How much greater the necessity, then, the responsibility which such 
parents should feel themselves under, after having been the willing 
agents of bringing into existence this offspring, to nurture and nourish 
them with the most scrupulous fidelity to the laws of their physical 
being, instead of violating them so grossly at the very dawn of their 
existence. Those that possess more robust constitutions, and are not 
so susceptible by hereditary taint, pass on through the period of in- 
fancy only, in a large number of instances, to acquire a disposition to 
a little later fatality, of this same disease, from the constant violation 
of this law of vital temperature that we have illustrated. In a country 
so cold as ours, with a climate subject to such vicissitudes from warm 
to cold, cold to warm, dampness and chill constantly supervening upon 



64: PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

heat, every one knows, or should know, at least, the importance of 
guarding the extremities of the body and the surface from the action 
of this climate, by proper, suitable, woolen covering and garments. 

But Avhat do we see ? as we before said. Children pass along, in a 
cold, winter's day, with their limbs and neck exposed to the atmosphere. 
This is the case in childhood, and in girlhood, in many instances in 
womanhood ; bare, naked arms ; if covered at all, it is with a bag- 
sleeve that affords no protection ; the lower limbs covered only by a 
slight cotton stocking, and a thin-soled shoe, which gives no material 
warmth or protection against the cold winds and pavements. These 
and many other agents, which form conductors for readily carrying 
off the heat as soon as it is generated, and thus causes the temperature 
of the body, in the limbs at least, of most female children, to be kept 
a long way below the natural standard. 

Is it to be wondered, then, that when the female approaches the age 
of puberty, the constitution does not possess vital power, stamina, and 
force sufficient to establish that great function, the importance of which 
we have so graphically delineated in the earlier part of this work, and 
the non-establishment of which causes the victim to decline into early 
Consumption ? 

Suppose, in a few instances, she passes on, and the function is estab- 
lished, it is but a little while before it becomes irregular, and at length 
suppressed entirely, as the consequence of continued depression of 
vital heat, by compression of the chest, insufficient respiration, the 
breathing of confined air, the neglect of proper clothing ; hence, the 
blood being chilled continually at its surface, is again driven back, every 
four minutes, to pass through the heart, the lungs, the uterus, and the 
female sexual organs, diminished in its temperature ; hence, this im- 
portant function is suspended or suppressed in this manner, and the 
blood further undergoes that morbific change in the same process of 
morbid chemistry that we before pointed out. 

But the field is too large — it is too scientific and sublime in its na- 
ture — for it is God in his divinity that is within us, and who, when 
we devoutly obey his laws, makes existence sweet and life desirable. 
But the sad consequences of their continued violation, we repeat, are 
too great to truthfully depict in this brief work. The reader must 
anticipate its narration in detail, in the work that we have alluded to. 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 65 



fjtfntb jftftiatt. 



Light, the Integral Principle of Heat, forms another one of the Great Laws and 
Agents essential to our Physical Development, and the consequent' maintenance 
of Perfect Health, the seclusion from which forms another great cause for 
Tubercular Consumption. 

Instances of Tubercular Consumption and Scrofula without num- 
ber, both in childhood and at later periods of life, have been directly 
traced to the exclusion of light. Such is the case in a vast number 
of dwellings in the United States. Those who spend much of their 
time in damp basements or rooms, invariably take on this scrofulous 
or tubercular condition, and die from it. These effects have been 
observed by eminent pathologists in various parts of Europe. Drs. 
Carswell, Jenner, and many others who have had the opportunity of 
dissecting tigers, monkeys, and other animals that died in menageries 
— where they had been secluded from the light — invariably found 
them to have tubercles in the lungs, an instance never known to them 
in their natural condition. To such an extent does this seclusion of 
light and association of darkness figure in the cause of Tubercular 
Consumption, that it has been generated at will, by Dr. Jenner and 
others. How ? By secluding rabbits from the light in a damp cellar, 
when, after a few weeks only, tubercles were found in their lungs. 

To illustrate what we have just said, we will give some instances : 

A New-York merchant noticed, in the progress of years, that each 
successive book-keeper gradually lost his health, and finally died of 
Consumption, however vigorous and robust he was on entering his 
service. At length it occurred to him that the little rear room where 
the books were kept opened into a back-yard, so surrounded by high 
walls, that no sunshine came into the room from one year's end to an- 
other. An upper room, well lighted, was immediately prepared, and 
his clerks had uniform good health ever after. 

A familiar case to general readers, is derived from medical works, 
where an entire English family became ill, and all remedies seemed to 
fail of their usual results, when accidentally a window-glass of the 
family room was broken, in cold weather. It was not repaired, and 



66 PULMONAKY CONSUMPTION. 

forthwith there was a marked improvement in the health of the inmates. 
The physician at once traced the connection, discontinued his medi- 
cines, and ordered that the window-pane should not be repaired. 

A French lady became ill. The most eminent physicians of her 
time were called in, but failed to restore her. At length Dupuytren, 
the Napoleon of physic, was consulted. He noticed that she lived in 
a dim room, into which the sun never shone ; the house being situated 
in one of the narrow streets, or rather lanes of Paris. He at once 
ordered more airy and cheerful apartments, and " all her complaints 
vanished." 

The lungs of a dog become tuberculated (consumptive) in a few 
weeks, if kept confined in a dark cellar. The most common plant 
grows spindly, pale, and scraggling, if no sunlight fall upon it. The 
greatest medical names in France, of the last century, regarded sun- 
shine and pure air as equal agents in restoring and maintaining health. 

From these facts, which can not be disputed, the most common 
mind should conclude that cellars, and rooms on the northern side of 
buildings, or apartments into which the sun does not immediately 
shine, should never be occupied as family rooms or chambers, or as 
libraries or " studies." Such apartments are only fit for " stowage " 
or purposes which never require persons to remain in them over a few 
minutes at a time. And every intelligent and humane parent will 
arrange that the family room and chambers shall be the most commo- 
dious, lightest, and brightest apartments in his dwelling. 

It is painful and melancholy in the extreme, knowing those laws of 
life and health as every one does, to see how extensively and willfully 
they are violated, especially this law of sunshine and light, every day, 
by the fair sex even. So fearful are they of God's heavenly sunshine, 
when they walk in the open air, on the street, in the open fields, for 
fear it will tinge, or seriously embrown their already too pallid faces, 
they must introduce sun-shades between their faces and this sublime 
messenger of life and health, which emanates from that globe so many 
millions of miles distant, set in the firmament so high, and deemed so 
necessary to shed its benign rays and effulgence over the extent of 
God's heritage, and the offspring of his paternal care, in all parts of 
this sublime universe. See her in the parlor, sitting at the window, 
working some muslin or lace ; she must close the blinds, or sunshade, 
and tax or dim her optics by straining them to get sufficient light to 
perform her work, for fear of the same results that we have just men- 
tioned. Hence, the pernicious influences are carried on in this way, 
and in thousands of other ways that we can not now mention, until 
the fatal result is accomplished. 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 67 

Every observer of the processes of nature, in the vegetable or ani- 
mal kingdom, knows that without sunshine and light, nothing of this 
nature is brought to perfection, or a sufficient maturity to be made use 
of for food or consumption. The value of heat and sunshine are so 
well known in producing vegetables and fruits, that where the attain- 
ment of it can not be had, in a season too short to be accomplished in 
the open air, means are artificially devised, to concentrate these agents 
to develop the articles and the objects sought for, prematurely. 

We repeat, then, that neither vegetation, grain, nor fruits, can be 
made fit for use without sunshine and light ; they are just as essen- 
tial to human life, to give color and momentum to the blood, and 
maintain us in our own health and perfection. Seeing this, then, how 
willful is the violation that the fair sex take upon themselves — to ex- 
clude this messenger of their life and consequent happiness. This law 
of light and sunshine, the integral elements of heat, combined, are 
imperatively requisite to develop life and a healthy organism, under all 
circumstances and in every department of the animal kingdom, from 
the lowest to the highest. We see the most striking consequences 
in lower animals, when light and sunshine are deprived them. In 
the subterranean waters of the Carniola, in France, there is found the 
proteus anguiformis, an animal between the frog and the tadpole. 
Dr. Edwards, a man of extensive attainments, and, perhaps, one who 
has made more observations in this department than any other, pro- 
duced an exactly analogous being — a half-developed frog — by exclud- 
ing a tadpole, during its growth, from the influence of the light. In our 
own country, this important physiological fact is more strikingly illus- 
trated, as is well known by those who have visited the Mammoth Cave 
in Kentucky, where fish are found without eyes. 

These facts, in the great chain of animal and human existence, show 
— what ? They show, my readers, the important fact, namely, that 
every thing in the great chain of nature, from a monad to a monarch, 
trembles to an infinite law. It should appall us by its magnitude ; it 
should astound us by its infinite majesty ; for it is none other than was 
taught by Jesus himself, when he told his disciples, in this world, two 
thousand years ago, that God, in his infinite wisdom, governed man 
by laws so minute and yet so powerful, that there was not a hair of 
our heads that was not numbered, and a sparrow falleth not to the 
ground without our heavenly Father's knowledge. 

Let us pause here for a moment's reflection. Let us view the mi- 
nuteness yet searching power of God's infinite laws in every department 
of nature, even in the obscure cave in Kentucky, where the first ray 
of light which dawned upon the world five thousand years ago has 



68 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

never reached — these fish, trembling in obedience to every other law 
where the elements exist, are deficient of those orbs, under the search- 
ing operation of that law of light, teaching us the moral lesson that orbs 
were made for light, and that where there is no light no orbs are re- 
quired for its perception. However blind may be these fish, because 
they have no light, yet they enjoy all the other blessings of their ex- 
istence equally as well. But for mankind, to whom light has been 
given in abundance, and faculties for its perception, to remain willfully 
blind in relation to those laws that govern their being, affords a source 
for self-reproach and condemnation, that should cause them to " bow 
their low forms and hide their starry heads." 

Those poor mortals who are subjected to tyranny and its controlling 
influences in society, who are kept down by the power of wealth and 
the pride of aristocracy, crushed as it were under its iron heel, who 
are kept benighted and compelled to spend their lives in coal-mines 
and caverns, elaborating and developing, by their muscular strength 
and energies, the ore that goes to constitute that wealth which serves 
to their subversion — for them there is sufficient excuse, because the 
violation of the law is produced by their subjugation on the part of a 
superior power, which emanates from, and is sustained by the muscle, 
bone, and sinew of those poor miners. Their condition in this life is 
pitiable, and appeals to our commiseration and the sympathy and 
charity of every intelligent person possessing the attributes of God in 
his bosom, who enjoys the calm sunshine of these laws. But to us in 
this free republic, endowed equally alike with the blessings of life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, where God's laws of life and 
light shine equally alike upon the beggar and millionaire, patrician and 
plebeian, there is no excuse for this willful seclusion. And when suffer- 
ing comes as the consequence, in pains and aches, distorted features 
and pallid countenance, in the weakened gait, restless nights, and 
sleep-disturbed cough — it comes as a monition from kind heaven to 
tell you that it is but a just penalty for the violation of those impera- 
tive laws of your physical being. Nature keeps an accurate account 
current with every person. The great ledger of our account is opened 
at our birth, and every act, moral, intellectual, and physical, is entered 
in that book ; a credit is made of each fulfillment of the supreme laws 
of our being, and every violation, whether the act be one of omission 
or commission, it is equally the same in its physical effect, and is 
charged on the debtor side. 

The supreme exhilaration and enjoyment of life that flows from 
health, from the harmonious operation and observance of these laws 
in the organic functions of our being, is the assurance that our account 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 69 

in this great ledger is well balanced. But when health vanishes, and 
pains and aches come upon us, our exercises that once gave us pleasure 
now become irksome and fatiguing ; the motion of our muscles and 
our bones and the exercise of our limbs, which once was so pleasurable 
and gave a zest to life, and made existence sweet and sleep refreshing, 
by producing gentle fatigue— these pains and aches only come now as 
a kind monition from Almighty God to tell us that the charges on the 
debtor side have greatly exceeded the credit. Though hopes are 
crushed, and our spirits sunken, and life should lose its charms, and time 
hang heavily upon our hands, we need not murmur at Omnipotence, 
for he has long since told us, by his kindest messengers, not only through 
his natural laws, but morally through the Saviour himself, who de- 
clared that our Father in heaven does not afflict willingly. All pains, 
sufferings, human woe, and anguish that we here endure, are not, there- 
fore, malign, but benign, and designed for our moral good. When 
we have so long and willfully violated those natural laws of our system 
that the physical harmony can not longer be sustained here for the 
purposes that he designed, he appeals to our moral faculties, to prepare 
us for that physical death and that grave which we have so pre- 
maturely brought about. 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 



Among the Concomitant Causes and Precursors of Pulmonary Consumption, 
stands first and foremost, Catarrh, or, in other words, a Cold. 

A cold ! that apparently harmless word, so innocently trivial in its 
sound, that it allures more victims to an untimely grave than all the 
other causes w r hich we have labored so arduously to graphically de- 
lineate. The courtesies and civilities of every-day life are so common, 
and so cheap too, it is considered as nothing when asking after the 
health of our friend or neighbor, to receive the reply : " I have nothing 
but a slight cold, which will soon wear off." 

Happy would it be for the victim — ah ! and perchance too for the 
friends of that victim — if this was the case! I leave it to the good 
sense and experience of every reader, if it does not prove, in the large 
majority of cases, sadly the reverse. How many have found an early 
grave, and sacrificed the hopes of a prosperous existence, w T hile yet on 
its threshold, that commenced with a slight cold? 

I can not better describe this than is already done in the language 
of a most eloquent writer — from whom I have borrowed in the pre- 
ceding sections — some graphic delineations of that worm that gnaws 
at the vitals of so many of the fair sex at least : 

" Consider a slight cold to be in the nature of a chill, caught by a 
sudden contact with your grave, or as occasioned by the damp finger 
of death laid upon you, as it were, to mark you for His, in passing to 
the more immediate object of his commission. Let this be called 
croaking, and laughed at as such, by those who are ' awearied of the 
painful round of life, and are on the look-out for their dismissal from 
it ;' but be learned off by heart, and remembered as having the force 
and truth of Gospel, by all those who w r ould 'measure out their span 
upon the earth,' and are conscious of any constitutional flaw or feeble- 
ness ; who are distinguished by any such tendency deathward, as long 
necks, narrow chicken-chests, very fair complexions, exquisite sym- 
pathy with atmospheric variations, or, in short, exhibit any symptoms 
of an asthmatic or consumptive character, if they choose to neglect 

A SLIGHT COLD. 

" Let those not complain of being bitten by a reptile which they 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION". 71 

have cherished to maturity in their very bosoms, when they might 
have crushed it in the egg ! Now, if we call ' a slight cold ' the egg, 
and pleurisy, inflammation of the lungs, asthma, consumption, the 
venomous reptile, the matter will be no more than correctly figured. 
There are many ways in which this 'egg' may be deposited and 
hatched. Going suddenly, slightly clad, from a heated into a cold at- 
mosphere, especially if you can contrive to be in a perspiration ; sitting 
or standing in a draught, however slight; it is the breath of death, 
reader, and laden with the vapors of the grave ! Lying in damp beds, 
for there its cold arms shall embrace you ; continuing in wet clothing, 
and neglecting wet feet ; these, and a hundred thousand others, are 
some of the ways in which you may slowly, imperceptibly, but surely 
cherish the creature that shall creep inextricably inward, and lie coiled 
about your very vitals. Once more, again, again, again I would say, 
attend to this, all ye who think it a small matter to neglect a slight 
cold !" 

What is the meaning, then, of this catarrh that we hear so frequently 
in nearly every person's mouth, especially this winter ? A catarrh, 
reader, means no more than a cold, or a " slight cold," as it is generally 
expressed. But by common consent, in the United States at least, 
this term is applied to an affection of the nasal organs and the upper 
part of the throat. Catarrh, in medical language, means an inflamma- 
tion that follows this cold, which confines itself to the mucous mem- 
brane or fining membranes of the nostrils and frontal sinus, which is 
none other than a continuation of the nostrils, a little way up into the 
anterior portion of the skull, or those projections under the eyebrows. 
Hence, on taking a bad cold in these parts, a pain is felt at the end of 
this sinus, about the eyebrows ; also, in some cases, to a very annoying 
and disagreeable extent. 

Catarrh, in its first onset, may produce a great dryness, thickening 
or swelling of those membranes, as it usually does, or may, in other 
cases, terminate immediately in a sudden, increased secretion, of a thin, 
watery nature, so profuse and yet so acrid that it makes the nostrils 
and the lips over which this discharge passes dry, sore, and not unfre- 
quently corrodes them. The reader will now understand, and com- 
prehend the magnitude of extent and direful result, in the end, of this 
disease that we are now speaking of, so carelessly denominated " a 
slight cold." 

The mucous membrane, which lines the nostrils backward, and which 
extends onward and over the w r hole lining membrane of the mouth, 
the soft palate, the tonsils which are situated on each side of the top 
of the throat, and so around the glottis, or entrance to the larynx 



72 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

— the larynx, by the way, is the organ of the voice, and the top of the 
windpipe, and that projection that you feel immediately under the 
chin, and so prominent is it in some cases, that it is called poma 
Adamis, or Adam's apple. Understand, then, that this mucous mem- 
brane continues over the glottis, over the valve of the larynx, the epi- 
glottis, throughout this organ of wonderful construction, whence ema- 
nates the human voice, and which gives forth a musical sound, so 
sweet, that it can soothe the savage breast or excite the timid to. 
shuddering and dismay. 

It continues downward throughout the whole extent of the trachea 
or windwipe, and as the windpipe enters the lungs at the top of the 
breast-bone, it branches. One branch goes to the right lung, the other 
branch to the left lung, and immediately after they enter their appro- 
priate lungs, they again divide and subdivide into an almost innumer- 
able number of branches or tubes, called bronchial tubes, which tubes 
are the air-tubes that convey God's vital atmosphere to those organs 
of innumerable cells and wonderful extent of surface which we have 
aimed so graphically and forcibly to describe to you in the preceding 
section, on the cause of Tubercular Consumption. 

But to continue this history ; these lining membranes that we before 
spoke of, that commence at the nostrils, where is first situated this 
common cold, or catarrh, extend downward and throughout all these 
innumerable air-tubes that we have just mentioned. Will the reader 
not perceive, then, the absolute fact and the phenomena that will occur 
and must occur by the continuity of action — that this inflammation or 
cold, in other words, if not arrested at its onset, will continue, by this 
same law of continuity downward, until it pervades the whole extent 
of this vast machinery, through the lungs ? Hence, what is spoken of 
as a common cold, or catarrh, proves fatal in thousands and thousands 
of instances in this manner. Slight as it may be, and harmless as it is 
looked upon at the time of taking it on and at its commencement, in 
just so many instances does it prove fatal by silently passing from its 
acute stage into that of a more chronic nature, in which all the aggra- 
vated features of the first stage have worn off, and with it the appre- 
hensions to any alarm, and it has become, in this second or chronic 
stage, so silent and gradual in its effects upon the mucous membranes 
and the glands that line those membranes, over and throughout this 
whole extent of surface that we have above mentioned, so that the 
glands themselves become enlarged, or at length put up considerably 
above the surface of the membrane. The secretion, which at first was 
thin, watery, and profuse, has now given place to that of a more scanty 
or tenacious eharacter, or to none at all ; so that instead of expecto- 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 73 

rating from the throat or bloAving the morbid secretion from the nos- 
trils, as in the first commencement of the second stage, this whole sur- 
face, together with the extent of these glands, may become so sup- 
pressed in their secretion that the victim is continually hemming, rasp- 
ing, or trying to clear his throat and the air-passages of that imaginary 
something which he thinks is lodged there, when the whole pheno- 
menon of his thus hemming and rasping is occasioned by that dry, glairy 
inflammation that now pervades the whole extent of apparatus, and 
which has entirely suppressed the healthy secretion of these glands and 
mucous membranes. Ah ! were the reader only versed in the anatomy 
of the parts, as when laid open by the scalpel or knife, after death has 
supervened upon one of those fatal cases, of what, in the first place was 
considered a " slight cold," as we have seen in hundreds of cases, and 
see the parts as they appear after death, laid open to the view, and 
perceive the wonderful disorganization of structure which is presented, 
when contrasted with the same organs in a healthy subject, he would 
almost stand aghast at the consequences of a " slight cold " — a slight 
catarrh. 

The careful reader will clearly perceive and comprehend that we 
have given, in the description above, an account of the diseases which 
are confined to the organs of respiration, known under the names of 
quinsy, sore throat, or inflamed, enlarged, and ulcerated tonsils ; throat 
disease, or follicular disease in the language of the faculty, because the 
little glands of the fauces situated back or posterior to the root of the 
tongue are called follicular glands ; laryngitis, which means the same 
thing, an inflammation, or catarrh of the larynx, trachea, or inflamma- 
tion of the windpipe ; bronchitis, which is the same disease in the 
branches of the windpipe, and takes its name from the name of its air- 
tubes after the windpipe enters the lungs ; all these diseases are one 
and the same thing, and proceed from one cause, namely, a cold or in- 
flammation, and only take different names according to the anatomical 
name of each organ, remembering, at the same time, that the same 
mucous membrane which commences at the nostril extends downward 
to the utmost depth and extent of the lungs. Here you have the mean- 
ing of that high-sounding yet common every-day term, bronchitis, 
known some years since, when it first began to attract public attention 
and acquire notoriety, in the United States at least, by the name of 
clergyman's ail, or clergyman's sore throat. 

This last-named disease, bronchitis, was so little known some thirty 
or forty years since, that it was confined almost to clergymen alone. 
But now, the thoughtful reader will realize that it is so extensive and 
of such every-day occurrence, that almost every second person that 



74 PULMONAKY CONSUMPTION. 

we meet with has bronchitis. When he considers, therefore, of the 
wonderful prevalence of these diseases, that we have enumerated in 
this section, had he not better pause for one moment and reflect upon 
the awful and more appalling fact that there can be no effect without 
its antecedent cause, and ask the still far more important question — 
what can be the cause for such a malady, so all-prevailing that it may- 
be justly denominated La Maladie JVationale, that is, the national 
malady. 

I say, then, some thirty or forty years ago, well in the remembrance 
of the writer, when he was yet a medical student, he was frequently 
asked the question by learned men, the literati too : " What is the 
meaning, doctor, of this disease they call clergymen's sore throat ?" 
This disease, therefore, so rare such a short time ago, and now so preva- 
lent and wide-spread, must have a cause as extensive — commensurate 
with its wonderful effects. What, then, is the cause of all these com- 
bined maladies ? It has been answered, at the commencement of this 
section, in one short phrase, " a slight cold ;" and the thrilling context 
that we append to our preliminary remarks has depicted the melan- 
choly results of a neglect to cure or remove this " slight cold." 

If the thoughtful reader will follow us along a little farther in the 
reflection and interrogation, the question will again arise, as this malady 
has become so wonderfully prevalent, to compare it with what it was 
thirty or forty years ago, must it not follow, as a matter of course, 
too, that the causes or proclivity to take on this disease have increased 
correspondingly ? I grant this, and acknowledge the truth of the 
philosophy in what we are aiming to explain to the kind reader and 
patient, that there is a cause for every effect, and that all physical 
effects discover an overt violation of the absolute laws of our physical 
being, namely, the laws of life and health. 

It is not intended, as we have before hinted, in this brief work, 
written from motives of philanthropy, to go into detail and show to 
the reader the almost innumerable number of causes which have 
grown up within this period of time to give rise to the development 
of these new forms of disease of the throat and bronchial tubes. The 
luxurious habits, the change in the nature and construction of modern 
dwellings and places of business, the methods by which they are heated 
and warmed, the deficiency of ventilation, confined life, and other habits 
of our American people ; their sedentary lives, fast and rapid living, 
their premature development and early excitement of those burning 
passions of the soul, hurried manner of doing their business, not afford- 
ing themselves time to take their food properly, hurrying to and from 
their meals, and bolting their food instead of masticating it, eating of 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. To 

pastries, confectionery, and scores of other poisonous articles of cook- 
ery, which are taken into the stomach, incapable of being converted 
either into healthy chyme or chyle or assimilated into blood; hence, 
whatever of this character is pnt there is converted into so much 
poison, and goes into the circulating system to poison the whole vital 
current and throw back its tide of morbid continuity of action again 
upon the stomach, the liver, the whole alimentary canal, the digestive 
organs, the onus of morbid irritation ; it extends upward by the same 
law of continuity that we above named, until the throat and air-pas- 
sages are tainted from the poisoned fount of life, and the whole extent 
of mucous membrane that did not come in the scope of our anatom- 
ical, philosophical description of the air-passages now, is affected 
through another source from the stomach upward ; hence the proclivity 
to take on this slight cold. 

Catarrh comes from a morbid condition of the stomach, and de- 
ranged secretions of the liver, constipated or confined bowels, deficient 
action of the cutaneous exhaling surface, from neglect of ablution and 
cleanliness, and in other ways ; by breathing confined, contaminated 
air, that we have before spoken of as being the main cause for Tuber- 
cular Consumption, poisoning the mucous membranes of these air- 
passages, together with a thousand other causes that should be men- 
tioned, and will be in the larger work that we have before alluded to, 
which is now being prepared for the press likewise. 

Does the reflecting reader wonder, then, after these brief hints, that 
we have so many new diseases ? 

I have alluded to the awful extravagances of dress in our bleak 
northern climate, subject to the extremes of vicissitudes, the cruel, 
sacrilegious neglect of clothing and guarding the extremities of the 
body, and the surface also, by the fair sex in infancy and childhood, 
and adolescence, together with a thousand other pernicious habits 
which have been cultivated in the short period of time — namely, thirty 
or forty years — and which account for the prevalence of these new 
forms of diseases that we have before mentioned, to wit, the extensive 
use of tobacco, smoking and chewing; so that hardly a male child passes 
eight years of age before he is puffing away at a cigar, or has a quid 
of that baleful, noxious weed snugly stowed away in his cheek, 
which he rolls from side to side as if it were a sweet morsel of life, 
when it is an agent of death to him, exciting and stimulating those 
delicate glands that line the mouth, causing a most inordinate secre- 
tion of the vital juices, which are spit away as profusely and carelessly 
by him as water rushes out of the perennial font. Did the same victim 
or slave estimate the extent to which he has drained the body and the 



76 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

blood of its juices, its supply, some twenty years from the time when 
he first cultivated an appetite for this most noxious of all weeds, to- 
bacco, he would stand appalled at the aggregate. Some of our pa- 
tients who consulted us, and whom we treated, at the age of fifty years 
and upward, had commenced this young, when suffering the untold 
horrors that followed it — dyspepsia, indigestion, asthma, difficulty of 
respiration, and other concomitant affections. When we had traced 
these for them to their appropriate cause, and shown them how they 
had undermined their constitution, exhausted their strength and health, 
and made the computation by ounces collected by each day's waste of 
the vital juices, in this manner, according to each quantum, we esti- 
mated it on purely mathematical principles, that some of our patients in 
this length of time had spit away, carelessly and thoughtlessly, from 
fifty to one hundred hogsheads of these precious juices of the blood — 
that is, in other words, those juices which are directly secreted from 
the blood by the poisonous stimulation and morbid secretion of these 
glands, which never would have taken place had they not cultivated 
an appetite and a passion for these destroying habits, smoking and 
chewing tobacco. 

Of course, as a general thing, smoking and chewing of tobacco ap- 
ply to males ; but there is also a preponderating number of cases of 
inveterate throat and bronchial affections, and loss of voice, among the 
males ; whereas, on the other hand, as an offset for their more sedentary 
habits of in-door confinement, carelessness of dress on the part of fe- 
males, do we have a preponderating number of cases of Tubercular 
Consumption. 

Causes of Catarrh. Tendency and Dangers of Catarrh. 

Perhaps we have not been sufficiently explicit in the introductory 
part of this section, " On the dangers of Catarrh." To do our full duty, 
however, we should be a little more explicit, and dwell a little longer 
upon the tendency of catarrh, not only to develop Bronchial but Tu- 
bercular Consumption also. We have before told the reader, in its 
appropriate section, that Tubercular Consumption was an offspring of 
pernicious and artificial habits of living, in as many cases, perhaps, as 
those who inherited a predisposition to it. 

So catarrh leads to the development of laryngitis, bronchitis, and 
ultimately to ulceration or contraction of the bronchial tubes, or the 
closure of the delicate air-cells of the lungs, causing tubercular and the 
whole combined forms of Consumption, known as congestion, tuber- 
cularization, bronchitis, and ulceration of all this structure. 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 77 

In some thousand of consumptive patients whom we have examined, 
we have interrogated them always as to the causes, both acquired and 
hereditary predisposition ; we know, therefore, from accurate data in 
our own practical experience, that full one half the cases of Tubercular 
Consumption that we have examined and prescribed for, for fifteen or 
twenty years, had their origin in a slight cold or catarrh. 

Have we not fulfilled, then, the position that we started with — to 
look upon a slight cold as the egg, which if nurtured in your bosom, 
would develop the reptile that would ultimately take your life ? 

But there are many other mysterious ways in which this slight cold 
or catarrhal inflammation acts aside from its direct ultimate effects 
down the air-passages and in the lungs, producing in the economy of 
health its direful consequences, and that, too, in a hidden, silent man- 
ner. The brain and whole nervous system is intimately interwoven in 
this cord of morbid sympathy throughout the whole physical structure ; 
so much so, that when one organ, like the throat, the lungs, or the heart 
is diseased, other neighboring organs situated in the abdominal viscera — 
for instance, like the stomach, the liver, or other glandular organs con- 
cerned in digestion and assimilation — take on morbid influences through 
this chain of nervous sympathy, so one organ hinges upon another in the 
whole physical, animal economy, one deranging the other precisely as 
with a watch or other nice machinery, only more complete, as the 
human organism is subject to and controlled by a divine law, whereas 
the watch is only subject to a law of mechanism in the human body. 
Therefore, we have not only the claim of morbid action from physical 
derangement, producing the liability to physical death, but we have 
also a law of chemical affinity to which the higher law of our animal 
existence yields in the end, namely, in physical death, its supremacy. 

When we reflect on this, therefore, and the fearful number of pre- 
mature deaths in the United States by the " slight cold " and its ne- 
glect, may we not, in justice to the subject which we so conscien- 
tiously and philanthropically labor to expound for the good of man- 
kind and future posterity, impart to them the knowledge and the 
importance of a physical education, as known and expressed by St. 
Paul himself, that converted disciple to the benign influences of Christ- 
ianity and the light flowing therefrom, when he says : " Know ye not 
that your body is not your own which you have of God, but that it 
is a temple of the Holy Ghost which is within you." 

When will we professing Christians learn to regard our bodies as 
temples which we only have on trust from our supreme Maker, for the 
express purpose of cultivating, preparing, and developing here in this 
earthly sphere that Holy Ghost, that immortality which it now con- 



78 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

tains, and which is designed by him, if we so use the casket that con- 
tains it, to develop it for a high and noble sphere of angelic, seraphic 
life, where human suffering and human woe shall be banished ? 

But the thoughtful, reflecting, and intelligent reader will ask, es- 
pecially if he be an invalid and a victim now suffering and laboring 
under the effects of this direful malady, viewed so lightly : Is there 
a cure for this catarrh, which entails such fearful consequences ? Does 
science afford means and facilities that are available to us to meet, to 
arrest the development of, and crush this viper that we have within 
us, while yet in embryo ? His faltering hopes doubtless will be cheered, 
his spirits will be exhilarated, and his sleep for the coming night will 
be more refreshing and more sound, in proportion to the encourage- 
ment in our assurance that we made in the preliminary remarks of this 
work, that we were one of those progressive physicians who disdain 
to sit down with folded arms, acquiescing in those old, worn-out, and, 
we are happy to say, fast becoming obsolete doctrines of the old allo- 
pathic school, that for Consumption there is no cure. We could not 
apathetically acquiesce in doctrines so discouraging and absurd ; but 
believe, and now assert, from extended experience, that God never 
suffered a malady to prevail without providing in science a remedy 
for every ill, a balm for every wound ; and we rejoice to proclaim to 
the invalid that we see that there is a cure for him. 

We do believe thai catarrh, in all its forms and manifestations, as 
it may affect, in ulceration, or enlargement of the mucous follicular 
glands of the mouth or throat, enlarged or ulcerated tonsillary glands, 
or its more malignant form of quinsy, sore throat, or ulceration, or 
that awful, modern-developed, epidemic malady, affecting the same 
part, diphtheria, and inflammation of the larynx, and its consequences 
in loss of voice, or ulceration downward to the bronchial tubes, in its 
difficulty of breathing, in its direful paroxysms of spasmodical suffo- 
cation, asthma ; we do believe that we have found a remedy for all 
these, if the victim will adopt it before this organic structure has de- 
composed and lost its integrity of vitality ; for we are not so bare- 
faced, presumptuous, or lacking in conscience, to assert that we or any 
man possesses the power to restore a structure once disorganized — a 
structure that required infinite wisdom to devise. 

Well, what is the remedy that we have discovered, which these 
emergencies taxed our ingenuity to devise, and which thousands of 
suffering invalids so much require, and which will answer the purpose 
even when patients are not able to see us personally ? In the first 
place, before it has extended past the valve of the larynx into the 
windpipe, our "LIQUID CATARRH REMEDY," which is used by 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION". 



79 



insufflation, that is, snuffed up the nostrils from the hand, is so scien- 
tifically compounded that it acts most benignly upon this inflamed 
mucous surface and its glands, to stimulate it gently to a new and 
healthy condition, by subduing the abnormal or morbid condition. 

The reader will perceive that this part of pur treatment is just as 
scientific, and rationally applied locally where the disease is, in the 
very seat of its manifestation, as it is so applied when it has passed 
farther on beyond the valve of the larynx and wind-pipe, where all 
liquids are shut off, and those diseased parts become respiratory organs 
only, and can only be reached by inhaling them in the shape of vapor, 
in which manner they are administered for laryngitis and bronchitis, 
which is the same catarrhal disease after it has gone downward beyond 
the valve of the wind-pipe. 




1. Diagram of the Larynx. 

2. Trachea or Wind-pipe, and the Bronchial Tubes. 

3. The Larynx, or Organ of Voice. 

4. The Wind-pipe to the top of the Lungs. 

5. The Right Bronchial Tube. 

6. The Left Bronchial Tube, and its branches, showing also the manner in which 

Medicated Vapor passes, with natural breathing, into the lungs and air- 
cells. 

Here the reader will see a cut and diagram illustrating the larynx, 
and where is situated, the little valve or clapper, as it were, which in- 



80 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

stantly shuts down the moment we swallow any liquids or food, which 
goes into the stomach, or even when the patient insufflates any liquids 
by the nostrils. The reader will also perceive, by the appearance of 
the anatomical structure illustrated in this cut, how medicines can 
alone be made to reach the air-passages and the lungs, as in Tubercular 
Consumption, by inhaling them in the shape of vapor. So, returning 
back, he will see that our system of treatment is entirely divested of 
old-fogyism and its absurd notions (however orthodox they were once) 
of putting medicines into the stomach, for this catarrh and this 
inflammation that commence at the tip end of the nose, goes back, 
then downward, then into the air-passages, and throughout the whole 
extent of these air passages and its surface, as we have described. 

The stomach, be it understood by you, is made— for what ? It is, 
as we have before explained, the grand laboratory of the pabulum 
of human life and strength. It is, in the first place, the receptacle for 
the assimilation of food into healthy blood. But this is not all ; 
besides its being a receptacle, the stomach is supplied with a mucous 
membrane and series of glandular apparatus likewise, like the air- 
passages for secreting, what ? Not moisture to moisten it, as in the 
case of the glands of the air-passages, to lubricate them and keep them 
in a healthy, pliant condition ; but, for what, I repeat ? To secrete a 
proper and essential fluid, called the gastric-juice, which is highly 
essential to aid in breaking down the food after it has once passed into 
the stomach, to convert it into chyme. What is chyme ? Chyme is a 
milk-like fluid, from the softening down of our food by the intermix- 
ture of this appropriate element — gastric-juice. The gastric-juice 
possesses wonderful properties. Its power is so great, as a solvent I 
mean, when the glands and mucous membranes of the stomach are in a 
healthy condition, as to be able, not only of corroding but dissolving 
metal. A wonderful illustration of this, is on record : A live Yankee, 
who had the fool-hardiness, when performing his feats of jugglery and 
legerdemain, some years since, on exhibition in London, went so far 
with his daring and wicked feats, that he swallowed knives. But 
he carried his temerity to that extreme, in violating the absolute laws 
of life and health, that we have been dwelling on, that, though nature 
at first seemed to wink at him and give acquiescence and merriment 
to his sport by her silence, she at length rebelled, in her majesty, with 
two-fold power, by causing an utter disorganization of the stomach, so 
that it retained the knives, handles, and all which he had swallowed; 
which taxed the power of these vital secretions beyond its capacity, 
and they lay there until after death ; and they were taken out, on post- 
mortem examination, were exhibited, and are now retained in the 
6 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION". 81 

museum of a medical institution, in London, as wonderful curiosities 
of the freaks of audacity of this son of Jonathan ; but to show the 
wonderful solvent power of the gastric juice, both blades and handles 
were very much consumed by it. 

I have merely introduced to the reader this wonderful piece of 
extravagance and folly as another illustration in proof, not only of 
the absurdity, but the barbarity of putting calomel, quicksilver, anti- 
mony, arsenic, and other minerals and poisonous drugs, too numerous 
and shocking to mention, into this receptacle that God has prepared ; for 
what ? To convert food, by its appropriate glandular secretions, or the 
gastric-juice, into the commencing process, as it shall be carried 
farther into the duodenum or little stomach, and come in contact with 
other appropriate glandular secretions into proper parts downward, 
into the pabulum of life, to nourish and sustain this wonderful phy- 
sical organism — this body of ours, this temple which contains the 
Holy Ghost ; sustain it for the great purposes that we have before 
mentioned ; and not for the purpose of poisoning this fountain of life, 
this sustainer of the vital organs too, which, in their turn, are to 
receive the vital atmosphere from the circumambient heavens around 
and above us, which is breathed in and completes that process on the 
surfaces of the minute air-cells ; by this last finishing-stroke of respi- 
ration of vital atmosphere, which crowns its process on its innumerable 
surfaces by giving it its florid tinge. Yes, there, reader, there is the 
ultimatum, every thing being equal — the poisons of old fogyism 
excluded from the stomach — where all your food when rightly masti- 
cated and put in, is duly converted into blood. 

"Will you not, then, at once and forever, become convinced with me 
of the absurdity of old allopathy in drugging the stomach to cure the 
inflammation and morbid chain of action, commenced in these mucous 
membranes at the nostrils, which ends in its fatal effects, in death, in 
the lungs, unless cured by the philosophical and rational manner that I 
have before explained to you, namely, by applying soothing and quieting 
remedies to the seat of the disease by insufflation of a proper soothing 
emollient, or inhalation in the form of vapors ? 

In addition to this " Liquid Catarrh Remedy," that we have before 
spoken of, that we prepare and furnish to our patients throughout the 
whole United States, and the Canadas even, there are parts of the 
mouth and throat which must be reached by an appropriate mouth- 
wash, or gargle ; therefore, in addition to the " Catarrh Remedy," we 
prepare such a Throat-Wash or Gargle, so that each patient at a 
distance, having complicated affections of these and other parts, may 
be furnished with all the appropriate remedies to reach every affected 
6 



82 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

part. This u Liquid Catarrh Remedy" and " Throat-Wash," we now 
send to thousands that we do not see, from their description of their 
ease?, and we are gratified in the reception of their testimony of the 
perfect cures done by them. 

But the reflecting reader, especially the invalid, so sensitive in the 
aeuteness of his sufferings, whose reason and causality have been 
quickened to perceive that he has a complication of maladies, affecting 
other primary organs, that he imagines, and rightly too, which in 
his particular case gave rise to this inflamed and ulcerated throat ; for 
he or she, as the case may be, has no recollection, in those isolated 
instances, of ever taking any sudden cold, however slight, upon which 
those morbid affections of the throat supervene ; so they have fol- 
lowed up our chain of philosophical reasoning, that we demonstrated 
some little time ago, when we endeavored to illustrate to you that the 
stomach and the digestive organs ; the liver, the pancreas, the 
duodenum and their appropriate glands ; the whole alimentary canal, 
the bowels, took on a morbid condition through other media, being 
affected through the chain of morbid sympathy, through the nervous 
system, and in the case of his or her sore throat or bronchial or 
laryngial affection, and they think the violent attacks of asthma, which 
they are sometimes affected with, has originated in obstinate constipa- 
tion of the bowels, in dyspepsia or indigestion and torpid condition of 
the liver. Perhaps they have discovered, by the energy of their 
exercises and inquiries in reading the causes of so many of these 
modern diseases, the wonderful function of the skin, and discovered 
too, that in their peculiar case, it is negative, sluggish, sallow, dry, 
harsh ; they have discovered, too, in the progress of these physiological 
inquiries, that the function of the skin can only be maintained by 
frequent ablutions ; and, in their special cases, it occurs to them, for 
the first time, that they have been very negligent in ablutions or 
bathing. It has occurred to them also that recently, since the throat 
has become so sore and troublesome, that the secretion of the kidneys 
is frequently thick and muddy ; it is scanty, and at times becomes irri. 
tating as it passes from the urethra ; it occurs to them, for the first 
time, like a ray of light shining through the crevice of a dark cottage, 
a dilapidated body, which now admits new light through chinks disease 
has made, that the decomposition going on in the body has not been 
carried off by the proper emunctories, and tells them the instructive 
lesson, that this irritating sediment discovered in the secretions of 
the kidneys are those poisons that should have passed off by the 
bowels and the skin, which they now discover they have too long 
neglected, and it opens their eyes of perception to comprehend that 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 83 

their sore throat has been occasioned by the disordered stomach, 
alimentary canal, and the suppression of the function of the skin ; for 
to the intellectual and scientific inquirer, these secretions and emuncto- 
ries of ours convey wonderful light and knowledge. 

Well, then, there are cases — and they are numerous, too, in particu- 
lar — that do arise primarily from a disordered state of the stomach, 
the digestive organs, alimentary canal, and other emunctories being 
deranged, giving rise by sympathy to the irritation at the top of the 
throat, without being preceded by catarrh or colds. 

Well, then, the reader will see that these cases require different 
treatment from insufflation, or the inhalation of medicated vapors. 
Really, they do. That is so. Well, our bitter enemies, who read with 
you this same book, and the philosophical and rational position that we 
have taken, and which we shall endeavor to maintain, will say : You 
must succumb to old fogyism at last, and these new-fangled notions of 
inhalation and insufflation have vanished. We must now put drugs into 
the stomach to correct this morbid condition, the history of which we 
have just read. But this is not the case, we reply ; in answer to the 
envy that may result from the rivalry or prejudices of the profession ; 
that corrective treatment, embodying proper specific solvents for these 
morbid poisons which are now r found in the blood— as a consequence of 
taking bad food into the stomach, and in a pernicious manner, which 
has been unhealthily assimilated and is the cause of this chain of morbid 
action and diseased conditions in the lining membrane of the stomach, 
alimentary canal, in the liver and combined organs — is not poisonous ; 
it is not calomel nor quicksilver, antimony nor arsenic, minerals or 
any kind of old fogyism or any thing of its deadly, devastating nature. 
The medicinal agents required and which we give are based upon a 
scientific analysis from our investigations of the chemistry of man, and 
the results of our investigations, aided by the microscope, were found 
to meet its appropriate corrective, or solvents, as it may be, which 
we find in the vegetable kingdom, and which God, in his infinite 
wisdom, has prepared for man to meet these contingencies and emer- 
gencies which he knew that man in his frailty and short-sightedness 
would be subjected to. Ah ! is not medicine, then, a sublime, noble, 
and humane study, when the physician takes nature as his guide, and 
understands her laws, and traces, by art, in the flow r ers of the field and 
the herbs of the forest, those material principles and requisites by 
which to cleanse, through the proper emunctories, this deranged 
system of the poisons located therein ; and to aid further the vital 
resources to arouse the disordered functions, and to overcome the 



84: TULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

deranged conditions ; then she asserts her supremacy in restoring 
health where before existed disease. 

We do give then, by the stomach, these appropriate remedies, solv- 
ents, correctives, and antidotes for these numerous poisons, diseased 
organs, and suspended functions, to restore a healthy glandular secre- 
tion, and cause every organ to put on and maintain its harmonious action ; 
then its machinery revolves without a jar, without discord ; and 
healthy buoyancy of spirits, hope, and cheerfulness exist, and health 
once more animates that diseased body which, but a little time ago, 
bid fair to become a sepulcher to its self-generated diseases. How 
much more easy is it, then, taking God, the author and finisher of our 
being, in his primitive laws, to become a rational physician and healer 
of the " infirmities of mankind" ? What profession, let me ask, on 
earth is more laudable ? What is better calculated to fire the bosom 
of a philanthropist, who sees beyond the confines of the grave and 
physical suffering and the longings after gold, the priceless gem that 
exists within that diseased temple — diseased because of the ignorance 
and willfulness of man ? Truly, " he studies from the life, and in the 
original peruses mankind." 

CASE 4. 

Obstinate case of Catarrh cured by one bottle of Dr. Stone's "Liquid Catarrh 

Remedy." 

My Dear Doctor : Having experienced the most happy results from the use 
of one bottle of your invaluable " Liquid Catarrh Remedy" in my own person, 
I am desirous, for the benefit of like sufferers, to make it known. I had suf- 
fered seriously from a catarrh in the nostrils and fore-part of the head, more or 
less, for several years, but within a year, or a little more, of the time of making 
use of your remedy, the discharges from the nostrils had become very offen- 
sive, so much so, that I had become a source of much annoyance to my friends, 
and was obliged many times to avoid society, on account of the offensive nature of 
these secretions. Aside from this, the constant disposition to expectorate from 
the fauces and throat a matter almost as foul, especially on arising in the 
morning, was equally as great. At length I was informed of your " Liquid 
Catarrh Remedy," and obtained a bottle, which I used according to your direc- 
tions, and gratitude compels me to mention that I am now entirely free from 
these noxious affections above stated, being cured by the use of one bottle only, 
combined with a bottle of your " Throat-Wash," or " Gargle." I do not hesitate 
to recommend it as a most valuable remedy for Catarrh. 

Ellen E. Baker. 
Potsdam, St. Lawrence Co., N. Y., January 10, 1861. 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 85 

CASE 5. 

Catarrh frequently masks other diseases; having left the nostrils, it, in 
many instances, insidiously produces its morbid effects in the posterior nares, 
or, in other words, the back-part of the nostrils and the upper part of the fau- 
ces, back and up from the soft palate, or velum palati, and it is not unfre- 
quently the case, that ulcers burrow deeply in those parts which are entirely 
out of sight, and they become so malignant at times as to cause, more or less, 
hemorrhage. 

This disposition to bleed, in several cases that we have met with in our prac- 
tice, has given rise to the most alarming fears. One instance of this nature, 
we recollect, came under our care some four years since — the case of Mr. Lape, 
of Scaghticoke, N. Y. He had raised blood from the throat, more or less, for 
some two years. In the mean time he had lost two cousins, or more, by Con- 
sumption— which was a family taint on his mother's side — and these melancholy 
coincidences had a most prostrating effect upon his spirits and his general health ; 
though his appetite was not seriously impaired ; neither could he notice that his 
strength was affected in any way by the expectoration of blood, which would 
appear very often, in spite of all his efforts at a cure. But the alarming circum- 
stances connected with the expectoration of blood continually weighed upon 
his mind ; so much so, that his spirits became depressed, desponding at times. 

He had made use of several remedies before he consulted us. We examined 
his chest with the Stethoscope, and upon the Pulmomcter, very carefully and 
nicely, (this was done in the presence of a friend who accompanied him, who 
seemed to take a great interest in his case ;) and we gave it as our opinion, to both 
the patient and his friend, that there was no organic disease in the lungs. He 
had a spacious vital capacity, and there were no abnormal physical sounds to 
warrant us in pronouncing that the blood came from the lungs, except a slight 
bronchial respiration — a dry, or grating, harsh sound in one of the bronchia. 
"We suggested that the bleeding might come from this bronchial mucous surface, 
that seemed to be in a state of irritation, as we could discover no local cause, 
in any apparent catarrh of the nostrils or ulceration of the throat, in view. 

He was put under a course of medicated inhalation, and advised to a generous 
diet. But, to our utter astonishment, it was unavailing to check the bleeding, 
for he returned, after a few weeks, still discouraged on account of the frequent 
expectoration of blood. We again made another most searching exploration of 
his chest, with the double stethoscope, by auscultation, and again tested his 
vital capacity on our Pulmometer, and found that instead of his vital capacity 
diminishing, that it was three hundred and seventeen inches, some eighty-two 
above the average capacity of men in good health. (The reader will see here 
another evidence of the importance of making use of the Pulmometer in all such 
diseases.) We gave it then as our decided opinion, that the blood did not come 
from the lungs nor bronchial mucous surfaces. Then, the question arose, 
where did it come from ? He had no evidence of Catarrh in the frontal sinus ; 
he had no ulceration immediately back of the tongue or the glands of the throat ; 
neither was the epiglottis or the rim of the larynx affected, for all were brought 
to view. The question, then forced itself upon us, we repeat, Where is the seat 



86 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

of this hemorrhage ? We came to the conclusion, that it must be situated high 
up the fauces, at the posterior nares, and far back of the soft palate. Hence, 
in order to determine this matter, we threw up a mild injection, back of the soft 
palate, by the curved nasal syringe, and at once washed out a considerable 
quantity of thick, ulcerated matter, mixed with blood. Here, the blind feature 
of this prolonged and disheartening case was at once decided. We told our 
patient what we always insisted upon, namely, that his lungs were sound, and that 
in one little spot, perhaps less than an inch in circumference, was the seat of all 
the disease that had given rise to so much mental anxiety, and for so long a 
time ; and we also told him, that if he would stay with us, in the Institution, 
ten days or two weeks, and give us a chance to inject the parts personally, wc 
would cure him in that length of time. He readily consented to do so. Suffice 
it to say, that this case was soundly cured in two weeks, and has now remained 
so for four years. 

We insert this case, in the first place, to show that Catarrh very frequently 
masks those symptoms of disease which are associated with the lungs, and of a 
most alarming character, from the evidence of bleeding and not knowing where 
the blood comes from. Because it is raised from the throat, it is thought by 
patients generally to come from the lungs, when, in many instances, it proceeds 
from ulceration back of the throat, or out of sight, and is one that can be readily 
cured, when proper local treatment is adopted. 

In the second place, we insert it here as a matter of reference, of a permanent 
cure of one of those blind cases, which are often looked upon with the most 
serious apprehension. 

CASE 6. 

Case of J. Wickes, Sandy Hill, Washington Co., JSF. Y. — Catarrh of frontal 
sinus and 'posterior nares. 

Doctor Stone : I beg leave to inform you, that I have used your " Liquid 
Catarrh Remedy," with the most happy results, in my own person. I had for 
years been troubled, more or less every winter and spring, with Catarrh, when 
one of your circulars, describing the efficiency of your " Liquid Catarrh Reme- 
dy," was brought to my notice. I ordered a bottle immediately. The first 
bottle gave such satisfaction, that I again ordered a second, which completed a 
cure of my case, which had been of such long standing. 

Speaking of its good results in my own case to many of my neighbors, seve- 
ral requested me to order it for them, which I have done, and they likewise 
have made use of it, with good results. J. Wickes. 

Sandy Hill, Washington Co., N. Y. 

Practical Remarks on Catarrh, Bad Breath from Catarrh. 

There probably is not a more offensive thing on earth than that 
which frequently emanates from the human breath. 

I know of many persons whose breath is so offensive that a large 
room will be scented and the atmosphere thereof become obnoxious, 
perfumed, as it were, if they remain in it but a few moments. 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 87 

The cause of this is very easily explained. The fetid discharges 
are constantly being secreted from the lining membranes of the nose 
and throat, and the air, in passing in and out of the lungs, must ne- 
cessarily pass over and through these secretions, taking up the effluvia 
and breathing it out. 

Now, although a bad breath is not necessarily fatal, it is exceedingly 
inconvenient and unpleasant, especially to those who are exposed to its 
influence. Many persons are prevented from mingling in society for 
this reason alone. 

This is one of the results of Catarrh — a disease which I believe 
fully two thirds of the people of this country are suffering from. 

I have already said that, in the majority of cases, it is the commence- 
ment of Consumption, (which fact no intelligent physician will deny ;) 
and to cure the catarrh, in all such cases, is to cure the commencing 
process of Consumption, aside from curing the cause of bad breath, 
and removing the disagreeable contingencies which the victim is con- 
stantly subjected to, either in avoiding society or else subjecting those 
whom he mingles with to the most serious inconvenience. 

My experience in diseases of the lungs, throat, and nose, has, of 
course, been very extensive, making it, as I have for years, a specialty ; 
and in saying to the public that the remedy that I now offer is an 
effectual article for the cure of catarrh, I assert that which I know to 
be true, from experience in curing hundreds of cases. 

We could go on and fill a volume with copies of letters and certi- 
ficates which we have received from our patients, who have been cured 
by our remedies ; but it is entirely unnecessary. Those that we have 
published are cases in point, which we meet with every day, and which 
we have in our possession, to refer to as evidences. 

But the " Liquid Catarrh Remedy," as we before mentioned, in the 
section on the consequences of a neglected cold or catarrh, alone is 
not sufficient, in many cases. For instance, in a case like that of Mr. Lape, 
where ulceration is situated immediately back of the root of the 
tongue, in the throat, then the "Throat-Wash" or Gargle becomes 
necessary also, and in many instances the corrective, oxygenated tonics 
and solvents that we give, both to purify the blood and to establish a 
healthy function of the stomach and digestive organs. Either of these 
remedies are furnished to our patients, and can be forwarded by ex- 
press to any part of the country, for two dollars per bottle, with ample 
printed and written directions accompanying them for their use, and 
also advice as to hygiene. 



88 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 



(BUvtvXh Stttkitm* 



The great advantages of the new discovered methods of exploring the Chest, 
and determining the incipient stages of Tubercular Consumption, especially 
by the author's Pulmometer, or Lung-Tester. 

It is almost needless for us to repeat again that within a few years, 
some twenty or thirty years, the whole medical fraternity, from the 
days of Hippocrates down, with some very few exceptions, Sydenham 
himself, perhaps, who has been pronounced the modern Hippocrates, 
have declared Consumption to be an incurable disease. Why was this 
the case ? Because science then had not made the happy discovery of 
eliciting light as to the true condition of the organs within the chest, 
from external physical signs and manifestations which it has now made 
and carried to such an extent of perfection to the well-disciplined, ear. 
It was left for Laennec to discover and bring to perfection the science 
of auscultation, as applied to physical sounds in the lungs and respira- 
tory organs and the heart. The true condition of the lungs may be 
as well known to one well-disciplined and experienced, from external 
physical manifestations as though the vital organs themselves could be 
seen by the naked eye. Formerly, every symptom of cough, difficulty 
of breathing, or impeded respiration, was pronounced to be incurable; 
this decision was given for want of accurate knowledge of what waa 
going on within. It seems strange that the principle that was so gen- 
erally known as percussion, (that is, striking a hollow body for the pur- 
pose of eliciting sound,) and applied so commonly in other depart- 
ments, should not also have been applied to the human chest. 

Every one knows that a hollow body will elicit sound by percussion. 
The chest, to the full extent of the lungs, excepting the part occupied 
by the heart, in a healthy state, is a hollow substances, and will give 
forth a resonant, clear sound. This art had been practiced by the 
mechanic to determine whether a wall was hollow or solid ; for in- 
stance, when he wishes to drive a nail in a joist concealed in the 
wall, he will tap r/ently with the hammer to determine whether the 
sound is resonant, holloio, or whether it is solid, thus arriving at tho 
exact location of the joist concealed in the wall. 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 89 

Acting upon this principle in regard to the lungs, it is easy to de- 
termine, by percussion, when the lungs have become consolidated to 
any great extent by the deposition of tubercles, or by congestion of 
blood, which follows frequently pneumonia or pleurisy, and leaves a 
lung or a portion of a lung perfectly consolidated ; in the latter case, 
percussion will elicit a flat or dull sound. 

This is one method of modern discovery. But, in addition to this, 
Laennec carried the art of physical exploration of the chest to a still 
greater extent of perfection, in which he applied directly the ear, by 
means of the stethoscope, or little trumpet, a cylindrical body, which 
furnishes a medium of conducting the sound from the chest to the ear, 
where it is not convenient to apply the ear. By this method of ac- 
customing the ear to the sounds of respiration in a state of health, it 
was easy to be determined, from extensive practice, the vast difference 
that occurred in the sounds manifested when the lungs and respiratory 
organs were diseased. 

Comparing these abnormal or diseased sounds, discovered before 
death, with the diseased structure that was found in many cases after 
death, a perfect science was demonstrated ; for instance, when Tuber- 
cular Consumption had advanced to that extent as to occasion an ulcer- 
ated cavern in the lung, this cavern will give forth a hollow or shrill 
sound of the voice over that very spot. So if the bronchial tubes were 
filled with mucus or other material, by contraction from posture, thick- 
ening of their walls, so as to create a harsh murmur or grating sound, 
or rhales, it has been discovered what were the diseased conditions 
that gave rise to those precise sounds. 

We need not spend time in a brief work like this, to narrate, for the 
instruction of the common reader, the philosophy of this science. Suf- 
fice it to say, that this principle is precisely the same in this respect as 
in music. If the ear is perfectly disciplined, (or one has a musical ear,) 
the slightest change or variation in a note or a part of a note is readily 
discovered. Such is the case with the science of auscultation, or lis- 
tening to the sounds in the human chest for the purpose of determin- 
ing the true condition of the organs within, or the nature of the dis- 
ease that may be manifesting itself. 

It will be readily seen, then, by the reader, that the ability of a medi- 
cal man to determine any thing in regard to a disease in the chest by 
listening, or auscultation, and the use of the stethoscope, depends upon 
his extensive experience in examining the chest, and his ear being dis- 
ciplined under a good instructor, where there are extensive opportuni- 
ties afforded, as in the large wards of a hospital, or in an institution 
where diseases of the lungs are made a specialty, as in the Troy Lung 



90 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

and Hygienic Institute. It is entirely owing to this neglect of disci- 
pline and want of understanding the science of exploring the chest for 
the diseases located therein, by country physicians generally, that leads 
them to reiterate still the same fatal doctrine proclaimed in ages gone 
by, with a very few exceptions, that for Tubercular Consumption there 
is no cure ; hence the discouragement met with every day by invalids 
in all the smaller towns and villages remote from cities. 

Many lives are sacrificed needlessly by uninformed physicians giving 
false opinions in regard to cases that they are consulted in, for not 
knowing what they are about. 

Says Professor Bennet, the author of several valuable works on Con- 
sumption and Pulmonary Tuberculosis : " I can not bring my remarks 
to a close without expressing my conviction that the general notion of 
its incurability is mainly attributable to the fact that it is not recog- 
nized until it be far advanced, and yet there is, perhaps, no disease, 
which, by one practiced in auscultation, may be more readily detected." 

In quoting the opinion of Professor Bennet, we but corroborate all 
other modern authors on the same disease, and give the opinion of the 
thousands who now make this department of the healing art a specialty 
in their profession. 

Although every form of disease that has manifested itself to any 
extent in the trachea, respiratory organs, and the lungs, can be readily 
determined by one skilled in this science, who makes it a specialty in 
the generality of instances, yet there is a stage in the development 
of Tubercular Consumption in which the ear and the stethoscope alike 
fail to detect the incipient process of tubercular deposition in the 
lungs. 

Since the great discovery of Laennec, and the farther perfection of 
what he discovered, this dark feature in the process of Tubercular 
Consumption has been deeply deplored, and thousands of lives, doubt- 
less, have been allowed to run on into the second, third, and incurable 
stages, in their peculiar cases, that might have been cured, and the vic- 
tims have escaped untimely graves had the incipient process been 
discovered while in the blood, when about to manifest itself by deposi- 
tions in the lungs. Dr. Bennet himself mentions the obscure process 
of tubercular development from the blood, in its incipient progress on- 
ward to its first commencement in the lungs, where no evident, exter- 
nal, physical sounds have yet begun to manifest themselves. This 
point was also noticed by the late celebrated Drs. Marshall Hall and 
James Johnson. Dr. Hall says, " that the constitution frequently 
takes the alarm before the stethoscope can detect tubercles in the 
lungs." Dr. Johnson says : " It is often extremely difficult to solve 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 91 

the question, after the most careful examination of the symptoms, and 
the most accurate investigations with the stethoscope, notwithstanding 
the confidence with which some medical men determine the point." 

The failure then was, and now is, to a vast extent over the world, to 
arrest tubercular deposits in the lungs at this early stage, for want of 
farther light and scientific information to determine it ; for though 
many of the air-cells may be incapacitated to be filled with air, yet the 
lessening of that capacity could not be discovered by the stethoscope. 

The question arises, then, how could this very necessary feature be 
determined to a moral certainty — whether the vital capacity of the 
patient was impaired or not ? To determine this point brought into 
requisition the principle or philosophy of pneumatics itself. It was 
seen, therefore, that it was absolutely necessary to invent some appara- 
tus that would discover the true vital capacity, by measurement in 
cubic inches, and illustrate it to the perceptive organs by a dial or 
scale in the same manner that the hands tell the true time on the dial- 
plate of a clock or a watch. 

Such was our experience years after we had entered the profession 
and made pulmonary diseases a specialty. We therefore taxed our in- 
genuity to devise the means requisite to meet this great emergency, 
and invented the instrument that you see figured and represented in 
the second cut of this book, called the Pulmometer, or Lung-Tester. 

Other instruments, somewhat similar to ours, had been invented 
previously. In London, the Spirometer had been invented by Dr. 
Hutchinson, and was used with happy results in solving those blind 
points in the process of Tubercular Consumption that we speak of. 
But the Spirometer was very different in its principle of construction 
to the Pulmometer invented by us. It was formed of a brass air- 
chamber, which dipped into a reservoir of water — the air-chamber, of 
course, being measured properly into cubic inches, to determine the 
number of inches that the patient could respire ; for the vital capacity 
was to be determined by blowing out into this air-chamber, which was 
balanced with two weights and made to rise out of the water by pul- 
leys ; but unless the instrument was exactly balanced and made to rise 
by the pulleys without the least friction, it was worthless for the pur- 
poses it was designed for. 

We, in the first place, went to great expense to have a brass Spi- 
rometer made in this country on the principles of Dr. Hutchinson's; but 
-we found, after going to this expense, that the friction in the pulleys 
of the w r heels was so great in raising the air-chamber from the water, 
that it was worthless for the object designed for. We threw it aside, 
therefore, though taxed with great loss. But there is no great loss 



92 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

without its attendant gain. The gain to suffering humanity has been 
immense at our expense, for it was this failure which led us to contrive 
a substitute, which we afterward did in the Pulmometer. So per- 
fectly and correctly designed upon scientific principles is our Pulmo- 
meter, that the principle upon which it determines the vital capacity 
is such that it involves no friction nor contingency that attends the 
Spirometer. It is, as has been described, a glass reservoir, perfectly 
graduated even to the fourth of an inch. This air-reservoir is set into 
a glass basin filled with water. The top of the Pulmometer is furnished 
with a valve and stop-cock, to which a tube is attached, forming a con- 
nection with the person's lips. In addition to this perfect manner of 
determining the true condition of the lungs, and whether their vital 
capacity is lessened by tubercular deposits or by any other disease, the 
exact quantum of air which each individual is capable of receiving 
into the lungs, is brought most evidently to the perceptive faculties by 
the corresponding amount of water which takes the place of the air 
that his lungs are capable of taking from the reservoir. The patient 
filling his lungs entirely from the air contained in the glass reservoir, 
water instantly takes the place formed by the vacuum, and the vacuum 
in the lungs has been produced by an immediate forced expiration in- 
stantly before the attempt to fill them from the Pulmometer. 

Since the invention of this instrument, capable of such remarkable 
accuracy, we have been enabled to determine by it, in more than a 
thousand cases, that tubercles had begun to deposit in the lungs, and 
advanced considerably, where we could not detect the first physical 
sound by which they are known by the stethoscope ; and, by the way, 
w r e use in our daily examinations the double stethoscope, which is ca- 
pable of collecting a double amount of sound, and contend that our ear 
is as highly disciplined and acute in this department as any other aus- 
cultator in the United States. We have, in many and many instances, 
been astonished at the light it throws upon condition of patients who 
frequently come for examination. They have not any very prominent 
symptoms of Tubercular Consumption, as we have previously remarked 
in the section on symptoms, only that they feel easily fatigued on 
taking much physical exertion, or their health is a " little delicate," as 
they frequently express it. We have explored the chests of such cases 
time and again, both by percussion (striking the chest) and by auscul- 
tation with the stethoscope, without perceiving any of the physical 
signs which are generally easily discovered in the second and other 
forms of Consumption ; and from the external appearances of their 
chest, we had not much reason to suspect that tubercular deposit had 
commenced, but we found, on testing their vital capacity, that they 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 93 

had fallen off sixty, eighty, and one hundred inches, showing to a 
moral certainty that the air-cells in parts of the lungs had become 
entirely unfit for the purposes of receiving air. 

We will here give one instance of this remarkable detection by the 
Pulmometer, of Tubercular Consumption that had far advanced, and 
yet the victim was about performing public duties, and in active exer- 
cise. It was made at the public exhibition of the Arabian Giant, on 
the part of his wife, when he was exhibited in the city of Troy some 
two years since. We here quote from the Troy Whig of the 28th of 
March, 1859. The examination of these cases excited such intense in- 
terest, that it was voluntarily published as here stated : 

From the Troy Whig of March 28th, 1859. 

The Vital Capacity of the Arabian Giant. — Dr. Stone, the distinguished 
physician to the Troy Lung and Hygienic Institute, measured the lungs of De- 
roth R. Gorhon, the "Arabian Giant," last Friday evening, as previously an- 
nounced by us, with his Pulmometer, or Lung-Tester, and found his vital capa- 
city to be four hundred and twenty cubic inches. The average capacity of men 
in good health is two hundred and twenty-four cubic inches. Taking into con- 
sideration his hight — seven feet six inches, weight four hundred and seventeen 
pounds, and age twenty-one — his capacity is not pari passu proportionate to 
the average of laboring men. Though his lungs are large and sound, the in- 
ability arises from his sedentary habits ; the pectoral muscles (muscles con- 
cerned in respiration) not being duly exercised to give elasticity sufiicent to ex- 
pand the lungs to their utmost capacity. His capacity is not equal to that of 
Freeman, the "American Giant," who exhibited in London some years since, 
which was four hundred and thirty-four cubic inches, hight six feet eleven and 
a quarter inches, weight nineteen stone, five pounds. But this was Freeman's 
capacity after training for a prize fight, which goes to show conclusively the 
great and all-important necessity of a proper and due amount of exercise of the 
muscles in the open air, and especially the muscles of the chest, and of maintain- 
ing an erect carriage of the chest, to develop good lungs and escape Consump- 
tion. The capacity of Mrs. Gorhon, the giant's wife, was only one hundred and 
twenty cubic inches. The average capacity of females in good health is one 
hundred and eighty cubic inches, demonstrating conclusively, in her case, dis- 
eased lungs. 

The instrument used by Dr. Stone, though plain and simple, is one of the most 
useful ever devised to determine either a healthy or unhealthy condition of the 
lungs. But its great value consists in pointing out incipient Consumption when 
all other modes of examination fail. 

But the important yet melancholy fact regarding the case of Mrs. 
Gorhon, the giant's wife, is here to be told. It was by voluntary re- 
quest and solicitation that we tested her capacity. She was about of- 



94 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

filiating, as we before said, in the public labors of the exhibition, and 
wins, to the common observer, as far as external appearance was con- 
cerned, in perfect health, yet, on testing her lungs, she instantly com- 
plained of soreness, and pain on filling them to their utmost extent, 
which showed, by the way, a falling off of some sixty inches, or nearly 
one quart of air beyond what they should have been in health. She 
did not solicit our opinion, but we casually observed to her that she 
had tubercles in her lungs, and gave ourselves no further thought re- 
specting it. They left the city of Troy ; but a friend of ours, who was 
present at the examination, being interested at the scientific process of 
testing their vital capacity, noticed my remarks in particular. He hap- 
pened to be in New- York, in the fall, afterward, in Barnum's Museum, 
where the giant himself, Mr. Gorhon, was on exhibition, under the 
auspices of that great showman. My friend was instantly recognized 
by the Giant, and entered into cheerful conversation with him, so much 
so, that he was induced, in a little time, to ask after his wife ; but judge 
of my friend's astonishment when he was answered that his wife had 
been dead several weeks with Tubercular Consumption. 

This little incident will show to the reader, then, the remarkable 
power of this Pulmometer to elicit light upon the hitherto latent 
points, that we have before spoken of, the concealed nature of which 
was so long deplored by auscultators, and which may be made the 
means, if timely adopted, of arresting at once the course of that mon- 
ster who lies concealed in ambush, waiting his farther opportunity 
to crimson his fangs in human blood. Ah ! he satiates his craving ap- 
petite with blood drank at the very vitals of his victim, and, before this 
important discovery, could only be detected, in a farther and more 
advanced stage of the disease, by a painfully beautiful hectic flush, 
that harbinger which comes too late for science to relieve. 

Desiring to relieve ourselves, in proclaiming the great benefits to be 
derived by suffering humanity from this invention of ours, of the 
charge of egotism or personal aggrandizement, we will corroborate 
our statement by citing a remarkable instance, where Dr. Hutchinson 
detected incipient phthisis by means of his Spirometer, when two phy- 
sicians, well skilled in auscultation, both affirmed that they could not 
detect any organic disease, (this w r as in the case of Freeman, the Ameri- 
can Giant, who had gone to England for exhibition,) but in eleven 
months after this examination, he died in the last stage of Consumption. 

This instance is another proof of the great advantage of the Pulmo- 
meter in detecting the first inroads of Consumption, before the Stetho- 
scope can detect it. 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 



95 




PUI,MGMETER — INVENTED BY THE ADTHOK. 



96 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 



Itwtftfi Stukhm. 



Scrofula, the foundation and canse of Tubercular Consumption, G-oitre, Broncho- 
cele, Spinal Curvature, Hip-joint Disease, Intestinal Worms, all embody Scrofula 
and Tubercular Consumption. 

What is Scrofula ? This is a great and momentous question ; for 
it is broad and comprehensive in its field of morbid action, yet a name 
used every day by thousands in a very vague and meaningless manner, 
compared, we mean, with the awful ravages and devastation produced 
by the silent action of its virus — vague and meaningless, because 
many such names, which have been handed down to us by our ances- 
tors originated in the darker ages of the world, so far as medicine 
was concerned, and as to any correct derivative for the purpose of ex- 
pressing their nature. For instance, the word Scrofula derives its name 
from scrofa, a sow, because swine were presumed to be subject to a 
similar complaint. TLe modern medical definition of Scrofula is, a 
state of the system characterized by indolent glandular tumors, chiefly 
in the neck, suppurating slowly and imperfectly, and healing with 
difficulty. 

How imperfect and meaningless, then, is the name of Scrofula — de- 
rived from swine — when applied to that awful disease which we have 
labored so hard, in the preceding sections, to show, and which is none 
other than Tubercular Consumption, which causes the death of untold 
millions, as it were, not only with the disease in that form, but in the 
innumerable other forms which we have alluded to ! For when we 
traced, by analysis, what tubercles were in the lungs, and how they 
formed, and traced them back to a certain condition of the blood, we 
then said, that the condition of the blood which forms tubercles in the 
lungs, was the same that caused swellings in the glands of the neck, 
swollen eye-lids, tumid lips, aversion to light, hip-joint disease, spinal 
curvature, rickets, or deformity of the chest and bones, and a soften- 
ing of the bones, and which, in many instances of childhood and later 
periods of life, terminate in caries of the bones also, and white-swell- 
ings of the knee. Furthermore, we mentioned, that this same morbid 
condition of the blood, which gave rise to tubercles in the lungs in 
later periods of life, caused death to a great extent in infancy and 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 97 

childhood, by hydrocephalus, or dropsy of the brain, and by convul- 
sions — it occasioned swellings of the mesenteric glands of the bowels, 
and dropsical affections likewise in their cavities, the cellular mem- 
branes and tissues of the ankles, and likewise of the chest. To Scro- 
fula belongs that certain inherent condition of the blood and system, 
to chilblains, chapped hands, eruptions on the face, scald head, ulcer- 
ation in the ears of children, which creates deafness, scabby sores 
about the ears, and thickening of the membranes of the nostrils. It 
is the same condition which, in the later periods of life of children and 
adults, gives rise to the formation of polypus, or spongy tumors, in the 
nose, ears, and other parts of the body, and which develop by inju- 
ries, or coming in contact with contagious diseases of the atmosphere, 
causing erysipelas, and to which also belong measles, hooping-cough, 
and the many other seemingly mysterious diseases peculiar to infancy 
and to childhood. It is that condition in children which causes many 
to be infested with intestinal worms, producing thereby convulsions, 
and deaths in hundreds and thousands of instances. The same, like- 
wise, that causes children to be infected with pediculi, or lice. 

How absurd and inconsistent, then, after reading this enumeration, 
the result of a morbid condition of the blood and physical system, to 
attribute this to the use of pork ? This absurd, idea, which is harped 
upon at the present time by many one-ideaed physicians, as being one of 
the chief causes of Scrofula in the United States, is a prejudiced no- 
tion that has come down from the time that the Jews forbade the use 
of pork, because many, in their times, that lived so exclusively upon 
swine were troubled with similar swellings or affections of the body. 
Thousands of instances occur daily, of scrofulous manifestations, 
wherein the children or their parents have scarcely ever tasted of 
pork. This, then, goes to show tho abusurdity of its springing from 
the use of swine. 

We do not doubt that people injure their health, and lay the found- 
ation for many diseases, by tainting their blood from the abuse of 
pork which has been badly fed and fatted, as it is termed, upon swill 
and noxious ingredients, which are so generally given to swine in a 
domestic state. But this only goes to show the abuse of this kind of 
food, w T hich, under other circumstances, when properly kept, in a 
cleanly condition, with due amount of exercise and healthy food, 
would become as nutritious and healthy as beef or mutton. It shows, 
at the same time, the absurdity of continuing to use the same ancient 
terms to designate modern diseases, which appear in many other and 
more aggravated forms than the name was originally intended to im- 
ply ; namely, simple swellings of the glands of the neck. 
7 



£8 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

This absurd use of names will answer the very purpose of blind- 
folding the people's eyes, and keeping them ignorant in regard to the 
true causes of disease, by physicians of the Old School, before alluded 
to, who delight to propagate and countenance this ignorance, as it 
subserves their nefarious purposes. "Would it not be more rational, 
would it not be more consistent, for them to show to the world and 
suffering humanity that this very disease, which is now termed Scro- 
fula, and which carries off so many to an early grave, in so many 
varied and mysterious ways, has been caused by their poisons, in 
drugging mankind with the most deadly of minerals, mercury, or, in 
other words, quicksilver, antimony, arsenic, and hundreds of other 
mineral ppisons, ever since the days of Hippocrates, the father of 
physic, down to the present time ? 

It requires but little science or intelligence to show every reflecting 
person that the vital stamina of our race has been gradually depreci- 
ating and becoming enfeebled, generation after generation, down to 
the present time, just in proportion to the increase of physicians, and 
the wide range of allopathic practice. To such an extent has the 
physical, vital stamina of our race depreciated, that a generation is 
born and passes off the stage of existence every thirty-three years, 
instead of living to the ripe old age of eighty, one hundred, and one 
hundred and fifty yea>*s, as did our ancestors. 

What a sad commentary upon physic and physicians ! Instead of 
bettering mankind by their art, we see people sacrificed by thousands 
and millions, through them ! Truly it has been said, by some of the 
noblest of the profession, that the world would have been better off 
had there been no physicians, and that more die by doctors than by 
the disease which they are called upon to prescribe for and cure. 

But the reflecting reader will see, that even the modern definition 
given by Professor Dunglison himself does not reach the Scrofula of 
our times. He has, in his definition, but reiterated what were the 
main characteristic features of Scrofula some hundreds of years gone 
by, before the stature and physical stamina of mankind were so much 
reduced, and when the disease only affected individuals, or certain 
families, or children of families, where certain local causes, or evident 
violations of the laws of health, applied to isolated cases alone, and 
not to a whole race or nation, as in our times ; for when the reader 
enumerates the physical manifestations, and varied forms of disease, 
which we attribute to Scrofula, he will at once perceive that all pre- 
ceding definitions of Scrofula, applying it to tubercular swellings of 
the glands of the neck alone, or certain deformities of the bones, 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 



99 



would be entirely inefficient to meet the many aggravated forms in 
which it now appears. 

Kind reader, have you in your experience ever seen a counterpart 
of the cut which you have here ? 




This cut represents a scrofulous boy, a child of three years old, or a little more — the 
distortion of the spine, the paralysis of the lower limbs, and turning in of the feet as a 
consequence. The whole appearance is that of great debility. 

The swellings or tubercles of the neck, the upper-lip, the tumid abdomen, all indicate 
that constitutional scrofula, the cause for which was laid in embryo, as described in the 
text. 

This illustrates, true to the life, one form in which Scrofula manifests 
itself. It represents a child about three years of age, deformed in its 



100 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

feet, in its spine, in its chest, and, in fact, deformed in nearly every part 
of the body. It has no symmetry, and scarcely possesses the image of 
a human being. It is almost destitute of muscle and the other tissues 
which are requisite to give development and form to the system. Its 
bones are so soft, that it can not bear its own weight, and you see its 
feet are curving and limbs bending under the weight of its own body. 
In our experience, in prosecuting our professional acquirements, in the 
various hospitals and infirmaries of the world, we have witnessed 
hundreds of cases similar to the one this cut illustrates, only many 
of them much more distorted, and made still more hideous and 
frightful by the ravages that disease had produced ; especially some 
years ago, when attending a medical college of New- York, we fre- 
quently made visits to Randall's Island, where are situated two public 
charitable hospitals for the reception of children alone. Here, at this 
institution, are brought many sick and diseased children from the city 
of New- York, many of whom are orphans. In this institution we 
witnessed Scrofula in nearly every shape and condition ; for here 
whole wards were affected with scrofulous ophthalmia, or inflamma- 
tion of the eyes ; many unable to see, some blear-eyed, some w T ith 
acute sensibility to light on the least exposure to it. Others are in 
that stage of affection in which the cornea, the horn of the eye, would 
be entirely changed, thickened, and in many instances made conical. 
There were others affected with ulcerations of the ears, producing 
perfect deafness ; others having glandular swellings of the neck, with 
previous ulcerated discharges ; others with the rickety form that ^ou 
here see indicated in the cut above. Many of them w T ere perfectly 
helpless, excepting to be able, perhaps, to feed themselves. Here, 
hundreds of instances of these cases of Scrofula, in all their varied 
forms, are brought annually from the city of New- York, being gath- 
ered broadcast, as it were ; being objects of charity and commisera- 
tion; thrown upon the charity of the city. 

But w r hat, you will ask, can be the cause for this condition of the 
physical system, in infancy and early childhood, which arrests the 
growth and development of some one or more of all the organs of the 
body ; which causes the bones to be deformed and softened, and gives 
rise to ulceration, or caries of the bones, or dropsical effusions, or in- 
flamed eyes, and abscesses, and the many other forms of disease 
which they assume in different patients, too protean to be enume- 
rated ? 

To answer this question, kind reader, w T e would say that, to demon- 
strate to you the cause for this condition, is to answer the question of 
what is Scrofula, and to demonstrate what constitutes it. The cause 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 101 

is, then, the want of vital force in the first germ of fetal existence. 
When one blind was brought to our Saviour to be healed, he asked 
the question : " Who sinned, that this person should be born blind ?" 
I simply make this allusion, kind reader, to sacred record, to illustrate 
the point of my philosophy that I have heretofore set forth in the 
preceding sections, and endeavored to explain, namely, that external 
manifestations, in themselves, in whatever form of disease or symptom 
they might make their appearance, were vague and indefinite, as to 
themselves, unless that symptom or external manifestation could be 
traced to its primary or legitimate cause ; for, so long as mankind, in a 
physical point of view, seek to consider symptoms only, to doctor them, 
as has been the course with all allopathic physicians for more than two 
thousand years, we shall not gain in knowledge by which to remove 
the cause, and thereby escape these direful effects. 

It is contended by writers on Scrofula, and by those who yet con- 
tinue to reiterate Old-School notions of pathology, that Scrofula, like 
Tubercular Consumption, is a disease that always has been inherited, 
and is now continuing to be propagated, or, in other words, transmit- 
ted down from sire to son, from generation to generation. Admit 
this to be true, which we do in many instances, and it follows, of 
necessity, that there must have been some first cause to develop this 
certain morbid condition of the system which constituted Scrofula 
then, and which, as has been shown, was very simple in its manifesta- 
tion to what it now is ; for Scrofula is not only a ten-fold, but a fifty- 
fold more aggravated and hideous disease than it was in the days of 
Hippocrates, or even centuries ago, when it was denominated " King's 
Evil," and received by the commonalty as true, that the touch of the 
royal finger would disperse it, namely, the same glandular swellings 
of the neck. 

Scrofula in ancient times combined, for its causes and developments, 
coincidence of climate, watery condition of diet, and whatever kind 
of food that did not possess the material elements requisite to develop 
a healthy organism, and which now characterize Scrofula in various 
parts of Italy, Switzerland, parts of Germany, and other parts of 
Europe, where it assumes the form of cretinism, to develop the enor- 
mous bronchocele, or swelling of the thyroid glands, which I wish to 
give a cut of hereafter. But that form of Scrofula is very different, 
as the reader is already aware, from the Scrofula of the nineteenth 
century in the United States. 

I come to the point then, of illustration of what constitutes Scro- 
fula — it is a want of vitality in the parent germ, laid in embryo. This 
is the opinion of Lugol, who has written an able monograph on this 



102 PULMONAKY CONSUMPTION. 

subject. " Scrofula," says he ? "manifests its terrible effects in the early 
months of fetal existence, for it causes those spontaneous abortions 
which destroy at least one quarter of those affected before they see 
the light ; afterward it wastes their physical and moral development ; 
it complicates all the diseases of the evolutions of youth, which it ren- 
ders helpless and full of dangers; finally it reveals its presence more 
formally by a great number of morbid stages, the common origin of 
which has therefore been overlooked, and which, for this reason, au- 
thors have described as so many special diseases." 

I have said that Scrofula is a w r ant of vitality even in the germ 
itself. I repeat, that I admit this predisposition to generate it by the 
constant marriage and intermarriage of scrofulous people, and a 
violation of the laws of consanguinity in that manner incompatible 
with the laws of life and health, so that this scrofulous condition and 
want of vitality is propagated and kept up, in this inherited manner, 
to an awful extent, amid all the light that has dawned upon the nine- 
teenth century ; for, notwithstanding the knowledge that we possess, 
or that is within the reach of every person to possess before he enters 
upon the responsible duties of matrimony, they should know that it 
is an outrage upon the moral law of God for such as those to marry 
and be the voluntary agents and means of bringing into existence a 
puerile, puny offspring, -which they must know will be incapable of 
being developed into a healthy organism to enjoy health or life here ; 
yet, knowing this, they sin as they did in the days of our Saviour, 
when he asked the question in reference to one who was born blind — 
which should be asked now in every instance where we see a rickety 
or deformed child, or one with tubercular protuberances of the neck, 
with tumid eye-lids, caries of the spine, abscesses or swellings of the 
knee-joint — this, kind reader, should be the first question : Who 
sinned, that this offspring should have been brought into the world, 
unasked for on its own part, to suffer miserably, and die in a blighted 
manner, as it must do, so early ? I mean to have it understood, that 
this propagation of Scrofula by continued marriage and intermarriage 
of scrofulous and diseased people, and those who marry their cousins, 
as in hundreds of instances they do, thereby begetting foolish child- 
ren — children subject to cataract, or congenital blindness of every 
name and nature — is none other than God's punishment for violating 
his moral law r in a physical point of view. 

The virus of Scrofula, which I laid down in the opening part of 
this section, is this ethereal virus which is transmitted from sires to 
sons, the sins of whom are visited on the children thereof, to the third 
and fourth generations. But now I come to this more modern kind 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 103 

of Scrofula, which I have mentioned of witnessing in my medical 
travels and pursuits, in various hospitals of the world, particularly at 
the Children's Hospital at Randall's Island, and which I have witnessed 
in my own general practice in hundreds of instances, some of which 
assumed many of the protean forms that I have above enumerated — 
that form which is characterized by want of life in the parent germ, 
laid in the uterus or mother's womb. I wish to ask the reader how 
he supposes, in hundreds and thousands of instances, this deprivation 
of life in the germ takes place ? This is an important question — too 
important to go into full, thrilling, and appalling detail, as it would 
occupy too much space here. That must be done in a monograph on 
the " abuses of the sexual passions, and sexual diseases;" but we will 
so far satisfy the longing curiosity of the reader as to enlighten him 
sufficiently for his own good, until he reads further, in detail, in this ap- 
propriate book. To begin this, in the first place, I make the broad and 
yet truthful assertion that there is not one couple in fifty, if there is 
in one hundred who marry, that ever stop to think, much more to 
inquire, to know and understand what are the duties that devolve 
upon them when they marry, or what an awfully responsible situation 
they are placing themselves in when they exercise the functions of the 
sexual organs and passions. Now, it should be known that the sexual 
functions either in the male or female, embody one of the most im- 
portant principles of our being — it is none other, kind reader, than 
that delegated to us by Omnipotent wisdom — for what? To fulfill 
His designs ; to propagate to intelligences here, on his footstool, the 
commencing evolution of animal, physical life ; to be developed from 
its proper parent germ into exquisite, organic, perfect form, and to 
evolve, in a perfect casket, that germ of vitality which is to be elimin- 
ated, from one stage of perfection to another, until, in the economy 
and course of his providence, a human being shall attain not only 
angelic but seraphic life. 

But I ask, in the next place : "When the majority of people marry, 
and they exercise the sexual function, if this consideration occupies 
their mind ? I shall leave this for each one that reads this book, and 
this section on the cause of Scrofula to answer for himself; but I am 
to answer the question in relation to the many distressing objects 
of Scrofula which it has been our fortune to witness and administer to, 
as a medical man ; that those who brought them into the world never 
thought at the time they were begotten. 

This brings me to the point, to tell you how this parent germ is 
deprived of its vitality, of its life-power, of its nerve-principle, which 
alone can give it perfect physical development and organism, after it 



104: PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

has been born and brought into the world. Even if the mother is 
healthy, the seed that is deposited in her womb lacks in the life-prin- 
ciple, in the germ, from the abuse that has been, more or less con- 
stantly exercised upon the sire from his childhood, up to the 
time that he completed this act. So, it is known by every physiolo- 
gist that is well versed in his department, and is well practiced with 
the microscope in examining spermatic discharges, as we have done 
for years, under the microscope, that in all such cases of marriage, 
where the parties were weak in the sexual organs, and have been 
given to nocturnal and diurnal emissions, that the seminal secretion 
is destitute of well-formed spermatozoa. In fact, the seminal secre- 
tion properly embodies, in many instances no spermatozoa at all ; it is 
but a limpid, glairy or watery secretion, secreted under a morbidly ex- 
citable condition of the testicles and seminal vessels themselves. But 
even in instances where there are, appearances of spermatozoa, (mean- 
ing the germ of the future offspring,) the microscope shows that they 
are deficient, even at that early stage, in development ; they are crip- 
pled in the point of extremity of the tail-part, as it is termed by phy- 
siologists and chemists. 

Here, then, in the first origin of the germ of human life, lies the 
cause of Scrofula. 

Kind reader, we have told you, in the preliminary sections of this 
work, in giving you some reasons for writing, that we have investigat- 
ed animal chemistry, and the chemistry of man, with intense applica- 
tion, and with profound interest, and that the microscope had been 
brought within a few years, to the aid of scientific men in these inves- 
tigations, which had their origin, in this new light, to an actual demon- 
stration upon physiological chemistry — which had hitherto been made 
a matter of conjecture — where before all was darkness and empiri- 
cism. In investigating the cause for Scrofula in all its hideous symptoms, 
to this wonderful extent, as is now being manifested in our country, in 
causing so many premature deaths in infancy, and in early childhood, 
in adolescence, and in later periods of life, by this form of tubercular 
disease, we have made use of the microscope, and brought in requi- 
sition the aid of animal chemistry, in obtaining our knowledge and 
arriving at our conclusion. But, to show the reader that this is no 
presumption, nor egotism on our part, we will quote from Lugol, the 
author we have previously mentioned, who has made more observa- 
tions, perhaps, upon Scrofula and its causes, than any other man extant. 
He says : " When the father is scrofulous, the fetus may find in the 
uterus of the mother, if she be healthy and should have suitable ru- 
diments, materials of reparation which will nourish it, and strength- 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 105 

en it so, that at the end of pregnancy, it will be more or less healthy ; 
but when the semen of the man is of too degrading a character, too 
destitute of prolific qualities, its elements can not combine intimately 
enough with those furnished by the female to have even a common 
degree of vitality, and pass through all the phases of fetal life too. 
Abortion then supervenes. However well-formed may be the organs 
of the mother, those seeds which are too much deteriorated can not 
germinate, even in good soil." 

This will show to the reader why there are so many such puny 
offspring that are born into the world, as the preceding cut illustrates ; 
who are born into the world to live but a short time in great misery, 
for the most part to themselves, and if perchance their lives are pro- 
longed, it is but to be a reflection continually upon their j^rogenitors. 

There is still another silent cause for Scrofula, laid in utero, wherein 
the fetus is perfectly robbed of the due amount of that vital force so 
necessary for its healthy evolution, and the organization of a perfect 
being, very extensive in its operations, and the magnitude of the 
bitter consequences incurred thereby are beyond human power to 
conceive. I mean by this, that the germ is perfectly blighted and 
withered, as it were, for its full perfection, for physical and vital 
stamina, and for greatness and usefulness also throughout the ceaseless 
ages of eternity, which is brought about culpably on the part of its 
parents, by an excess of sexual indulgence during the responsible pe- 
riod of gestation. 

Every intelligent person who studies nature attentively, and takes 
the unerring laws of instinct as his guide, well knows, that during the 
period of gestation, all female animals, with very few exceptions, refuse 
the male during the time in which their young are being developed. 
They repel, contemptuously, and with indignation, every advance of 
the kind. Then, taking the unerring law of nature as our guide, in a 
higher sphere of human development wherein God, in his wisdom, 
has labored to develop intelligences for immortality and future great- 
ness beyond the confines of this short, bodily existence, what do we 
see to be the conduct of man, whose sexual propensities are left to be 
guided by the superior and godlike principle — Reason ? 

Man's duty is to know, in the first place, when he takes upon himself 
the awful and responsible situation of instituting his own self into the 
germ of fetal organization, it is requisite that he should understand 
his duty toward that offspring whom he has voluntarily been the 
means of developing. But what is the case in respect to this matter ? 
Instead of the mother, when in the responsible condition of gesta- 
tion, being allowed to possess quietly and undistractedly all her bodi- 



106 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

Iy energies and nerve forces, to be there concentrated foi carrying on 
this great life-principle, she is continually interrupted, in the large ma- 
jority of instances, by the husband's having sexual indulgence, which 
robs the fetus of the nerve-forces, paralyzes and blights its harmonious 
development and vital stamina. 

The sexual orgasm, in both male and female, when cultivated and 
brought to its highest pitch of excitement during coition, brings, for- the 
time being, into action the nervous system in the most intensified state 
of excitement, so that exhaustion always is incurred, and this exhaus- 
tion, in many, follows to such an extent, that great debility and complete 
prostration ensue. Every one can see, that when the whole brain and 
nervous system are involved to the highest magnitude of orgastic 
excitement by an induced state of the passions, that the nerve-forces 
of the mother must be distracted and diverted from the embryo or 
fetus in the womb. So, for the time, more or less, continually, the 
fetus is shocked by this orgastic excitement on the part of the mother, 
and in so far as her strength is expended in this manner, is her off- 
spring robbed of that vital and nerve power which is requisite to de- 
velop its healthy stamina, and give life-power to its future intellectual 
energies. 

Many of the pale, weakly, scrofulous, and deformed offspring that we 
see every day about us in the streets, and in every department of life, all 
discover to the acute eye of the experienced physician a cause, namely, 
that they have been robbed of that nutrition and life-power that 
belonged to them, but which were expended in the sexual gratification 
of the passions, on the part of their culpable parents. . I have wit- 
nessed hundreds, ay, thousands of scrofulous children produced in this 
manner. 

Some years ago, when on a professional tour, during the summer 
season, to Meriden, Ct., ( where I stopped a few weeks to recruit my 
shattered energies,) I was consulted by an intelligent Irish lady respect- 
ing her child, a son of between two and three years of age. The 
child was well shaped and proportioned in every way as children are 
generally found. It nursed and fed well. But it was weak — it could 
not bear its own weight when it was old enough, and large enough to 
have been going alone some ten or twelve months. To this end was 
our opinion sought. We examined the child minutely in every way — 
its spine, its limbs, and every part of its organization — to discover 
if there was any organic disease that might account for this appar- 
ent debility, and inability to bear its own weight, but none could be 
found. Our causality and powers of medical discrimination were now 
taxed to define what really was the cause of this child being in this 



PTJLMONAKY CONSUMPTION. 107 

helpless condition, when so large and so well developed otherwise. 
After much reflection, it occurred to us that the offspring had been in- 
jured by want of the requisite vital and nerve-force, while in utero. 
We, therefore, questioned the mother, with the suggestion that we 
should ask her a delicate question, but that it was right for us to do so, 
and that she should consider it as such, and answer us correctly, which 
she promised to do. She then confessed, in answer to our inquiry, 
that her husband had been, more or less, constantly with her, hav- 
ing the greatest amount of sexual indulgence while she was carrying 
this child. Hence, we were compelled to draw our diagnosis or conclu- 
sion in accordance, of which we acquainted her, and she rationally coin- 
cided with us in giving it as her opinion that such was the case. We 
prescribed a judicious, hygienic course of treatment for this utero-de- 
vitalized and scrofulous child with the greatest success. 

We mention this case here as an illustration of thousands of 
very similar cases, where offsprings are puny, weak, and lacking in 
vital stamina, not only for development, but even a fair propor- 
tionate development sufficient to use their limbs or support their 
bodies, and cany them about. The cause is laid in mtero, in the 
manner herein described, in which the offspring has been perfectly 
robbed of the vitality that belonged to it. There are thousands of 
instances, too, where this devitalizing process has been arrested to 
such an extent, in the same manner that they become helpless and 
wretched all through their earthly existence, and pass into the spirit- 
land, crippled and pigmied, intellectually, in the same manner. 

When will mankind learn to study themselves — to study the laws 
of their being, and the responsibility to their own offspring, and above 
all to God, in the voluntary exercise of those important functions which 
he has delegated to them ? 

This brings me, then, in the next place, to consider what are the 
causes of so many abortions. Of course, the unprofessional reader, 
w T ho mingles not in the infirmities of mankind, who is not in a situa- 
tion to be consulted in regard to the many physical disabilities 
which prevail in the world, can have no idea of the vast number of 
conceptions which take place in the womb, and which are cast off pre- 
maturely, undeveloped in shape of abortions ; I mean those abortions 
not willfully and mechanically produced ; I mean those spontaneous 
abortions which take place even contrary to the wishes of the mother; 
for, indeed, in the majority of cases, it brings sorrow to her bosom, and 
fills her mind with despair, which produces despondency, in the blight- 
ing of her hopes — to see the fond anticipations that she indulged, after 
having her longings, like Rachel of old, gratified, in the ardent antici- 



103 Pl'LMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

pation of realizing herself in the daughter, and anticipating the bright- 
est hopes and prospects of fulfilling her functions, blasted, and that 
Continually in spontaneous miscarriages, or abortions, for which she 
herself knows no cause, and which, for their frequency, in many in- 
stances, make life itself almost a cruel endurance. 

I well recollect, when yet pursuing my medical studies, that my pre- 
ceptor was called upon to attend one female who had then miscarried 
twenty-one times, and each time uterine hemorrhage was so great that 
it produced entire prostration, and threatened her life. I myself pre- 
pared the prescriptions and administered them. In my ow T n practice 
I have met with hundreds of cases where females had aborted, and 
uterine hemorrhage ensued to an alarming extent. In these cases, the 
fault was on the part of the female. She herself inherited either a 
scrofulous predisposition, or else she had so lived, and so been raised 
by her parents, as to have induced and propagated a scrofulous consti- 
tution ; by that I mean a condition of the blood destitute in vital 
principles or necessary elementary materials which are requisite to 
give vital force, nerve-function, and energy to her ovaries, and to carry 
on the development of the germ principle in her womb sufficiently to 
duly organize and mature it for birth. 

This, then, will explain the cause of the many spontaneous abortions 
that an experienced physician is made acquainted with. I will again 
quote Lugol to corroborate my experience on this point : " Where the 
mother is scrofulous, abortion will not occur if she has been impreg- 
nated by a healthy, well-made man ; but if her health be much im- 
paired, it can not frequently be prevented, the mother and child both 
concurring to produce it. In cases of this kind, as in those stated in 
the preceding article, the fetus is no sooner conceived than it is scrofu- 
lous ; it has neither a degree of vitality nor the force necessary to its 
growth ; it contains the causes of abortion, which are nourished by 
the materials received in the uterus ; finally, the state of debility of 
these organs, which does not permit them to support the labor of ges- 
tation to its full term, which, added to the first two, render abortion 
more frequent." 

In a brief work like this, these two striking illustrations for the two 
fundamental causes of the most appalling instances of Scrofula— namely, 
those that come to light and assume the hideous protean forms of dis- 
ease, and perverted shapes, and those that never come to light, but are 
blighted in the womb, in the shape of spontaneous abortions — will be 
all-sufficient. But I wish to give one or two farther illustrations from 
the excellent author from whom I have quoted respecting other forms 



PULMONAEY CONSUMPTION". 109 

of Scrofula which are an every-day occurrence ; for there is scarcely 
one person in a thousand who ever conjectures. the cause— I mean hair- 
lip and cleft-palate : " I knew a scrofulous person affected with hair-lip 
in whom puberty did not ensue until he was thirty years of age, and 
who married a few years afterward. His wife miscarried constantly, 
although she seemed to enjoy good health. 

"I know a family scrofulous, from the incontinence of the father. 
The mother miscarried five times successively, at four and a half 
months, although she was healthy. I will also cite the case of a man 
who married when nearly sixty years old, and whose wife miscarried 
five times, and never bore a full-grown child. 

" Here are three very different states of health which alter the gen- 
erative powers of man to such an extent that the wife constantly 
miscarries." 

But there are every-day instances of scrofulous diseases in other 
forms, in females who are brought to our notice, from our extensive 
experience in the capacity that we fulfill at the head of a promising 
institution, the fame of which, we are happy to learn, is becoming ex- 
tensively diffused throughout the world, from the correct principles of 
science and conscientious motives which characterize its indefatigable 
founder and his associates ; we mean that form of Scrofula which is 
the cause of female weakness, or the combined diseases peculiar to the 
sexual organs of our modern females, known as leucorrhm, and pro- 
lapsus of the uterus, and, in many instances, combining also scrofulous 
thickening, or chronic inflammation and ulceration of the cervix-uteri, 
or neck of the womb. These combined maladies, are equally alike 
prevalent in the virgin female as with the married and the matron. 
It is almost needless for me to say here — what nearly every female 
reader will recognize to be true, and every mother knows in reference 
to her own daughter — that leucorrhea, in other words, a morbid dis- 
charge from the vagina, known as whites, is a very common affection, 
and scarcely can we except one virgin female in ten, who has passed 
the age of twelve, who has not, more or less, been subject to it. Leu- 
corrhea always indicates a morbid condition of the membranes and 
glands that fine the vagina, and generally the uterus also, and in many 
instances does it extend clear upward and onward to the ovarian or- 
gans themselves. To such an extent is this morbid secretion, that it 
saps the very physical foundation of vital stamina ; it becomes weak- 
ening and debilitating in the extreme ; it impoverishes the blood, by 
constantly carrying off the albumen and fibrous materials which consti- 
tute its momentum and vitality to a great extent ; it weakens the ute- 



110 



PULMONAKY CONSUMPTION. 



rus and the ovaries to that extent that it incapacitates the female 
from becoming a healthy mother ; and when she is married and placed 
in a condition to become a mother, if she is pregnant, in a large num- 
ber of instances, it results in abortion, as before described. 

But this is not all. The constant drain from the blood by undue 
morbid secretion weakens all the abdominal viscera, the bowels, the 
glands of the bowels ; it extends to the parenchyma, or tissues that 
hold the bowels together, so that the whole abdominal viscera, com- 
mencing with the stomach, the liver, the pancreas, and the intestines, 
fall down out of place, as is illustrated in the figure shown in this cut, 





This cut represents the diaphragm, the 
stomach, liver, and bowels dragged down, 
pending upon the bladder, and depressing 
the womb, producing prolapsus, or fall- 
ing of the womb, caused by constitutional 
Scrofula. 



This cut represents a well-formed, healthy 
female figure, having all the organs in 
their natural condition. The reader will 
observe the striking difference in the posi- 
tion and appearance of the bladder and 
the uterus from the foregoing figure. 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 



Ill 



In which the reader will see the displacement of all the organs of the 
abdominal viscera upon themselves, until they depress the uterus out 
of its normal position, causing this very common malady in females of 
the present day — prolapsus, or falling of the womb. 

Let the reader carefully compare the cut which illustrates the dis- 
placement of the abdominal organs and viscera with the cut which 
has them in a healthy normal condition, and they will realize at once 
something of the nature of Scrofula in the enervated condition of the 
vital organs, and the want of vitality of the system which produces it. 
To illustrate the appearance of a female when dressed, the subject of 
prolapsus, leucorrhea, and Scrofula which is seated in her sexual organs, 
we will give another cut of a female form in full dress, depicting her 
to the very life as she is met with in society or in her family. 




This cut represents a constitutionally scrofulous female — the subject of prolapsus uteri, 
or falling of the womb, and a dragging down out of their natural place the stomach, 
liver, bowels, and all the organs of the abdominal viscera — as she appears in fashionable 
society, dressed in gay attire. 



112 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

But duty compels me to .again notify the reader that were we to go 
into a full detail of Scrofula, in all its varied and hideous features of 
manifestation, and the many aggravated forms of disease induced 
thereby, it would swell this book beyond our calculation. The curious 
reader must consult a monograph which we are preparing on the 
subject of Scrofula at full length. But it will be gratifying to learn 
that, direful a disease as is Scrofula, like its handmaid, Tubercular 
Consumption, in many instances science and art afford efficient 
means to arrest its fatal progress, even when manifested in the hid- 
eous forms and conditions of childhood, and a permanent cure to those 
farther advanced, when affected, as with the impotent, prostrate sire, 
or she who, in the ignorance and innocence of her situation, has taken 
upon herself that responsible office of becoming a mother, without at 
the time knowing the bitter consequences that would entail upon her 
— the innumerable number of abortions — and menace her life with re- 
peated hemorrhages ; or with the maiden just setting out on the thresh- 
old of life, and approaching those years when nature seeks to estab- 
lish that most important function — to qualify her to become a mother ; 
and she who is now subject to leucorrhea, which menaces her with those 
visceral, organic weaknesses which, unless remedied, will perchance 
sacrifice not only health and all the prospects pertaining to the func- 
tion of maternity, but life itself; there is for her a cure, if timely 
sought, in the judicious and scientific treatment afforded by the faculty 
of the Troy Lung and Hygienic Institute. To her who is farther ad- 
vanced in life, and troubled with that serious modern malady, prolap- 
sus, we afford her an efficient cure, the beauty and consistency of which 
combines that happy discovery, to place the treatment effectually in 
her own hands, without the sacrifice of the comforts of home and the 
society of her friends, of being under the necessity of going away to an 
institution to receive treatment. To her it must be encouraging ; it must 
come almost as a ray of hope in her despondency, that we have de- 
vised the simplest means, mechanical and local, which she can apply 
alone by herself, with the utmost facility at her home, even with the 
greatest success — so astounding have been the improvement of modern 
medical science, and the discoveries made by our institution. 

But there is one other form of Scrofula which we have alluded to as 
once being very common in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and other 
parts of Europe, namely, that known as bronchocele, or goitre, and 
which is now becoming very prevalent in the United States. It is found 
extensively in many locations like that of the Connecticut river, in 
low, flat, or moist countries, where aguish diseases are so constantly 
manifested. It is that form of Scrofula which affects the glands of the 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 113 

neck, particularly the thyroid gland, more than is diffused in the "blood. 

_^jSg^u. We are meeting with instances of 

mM SP^^m ^ s f° rm °f Scrofula in our exten- 

^ &JL s i ye practice nearly every day. This 

«BP /JkP cu * w ^ illustrate a case that we 

^ffck *SF have recently treated and cured, of 

j| ifST a lady, who, by the way, was born 

J^^g^jll^ in Prussia, and now lives in Schenec- 

Jm ?JF tady. She has lived several years in 

^^fesajfe^^L, tn ^ s country, so that this goitre, or 

K^S^S ^^^^^^l. ^jj|||||. tubercle of the thyroid gland, had 

iBm taken on its aggravated feature and 

IRIP; ^SB InHSllMf development since she came to this 

^JPI|-s> ^jp3^^^" "VVe are happy to say that our 

. . „ „ , . , treatment in dispersing this gland- 

This cut represents Scrofula as it de- , . , , , ,. ,, 

velops itself in the form of Bronchocele, ular enlargement has been entirely 
or goitre — a chronic tubercular enlarge- successful. This goitre, or tubercle 
ment of the thyroid gland of the neck, of the thyroid gland, when allowed 
to progress, grows to an enormous extent. We have witnessed many 
of them in medical cliniques at various medical colleges, grown to such 
an extent that they raised the chin and impeded respiration by their 
pressure on the windpipe, so much so, that breathing was very diffi- 
cult. Scrofulous persons finding themselves thus affected, can not be 
too solicitous to procure our aid in due season. 

But there are other cases in which Scrofula is more obscurely laid 
in infantile life, but slightly observed in childhood, in which circum- 
stances, for want of right physical education, of good development of 
strength of constitution in earlier life, cause it to be developed in a 
melancholy manner in later years of life, in manhood even. We have 
met in our practice many such cases ; one in particular, that had run 
into a most aggravated condition, which, previous to coming under 
our care, bid defiance to some twelve or fourteen other physicians, 
and had been developed in later periods of fife by vitiated habits 
formed in childhood or boyhood. 

As I have before said, the sexual function and appetite is a laudable 
and noble one when left to the guidance of the natural laws of our 
constitution, to be developed and brought into action at the proper 
time, and exercised for its legitimate function ; but if tampered with, 
prematurely excited and brought into action by artificial excitement, 
by undue and unnatural stimulation to the organs themselves — ah! 
8 



114 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

long years in advance of the time that God in his infinite wisdom 
intended — the consequences are awful in the extreme. 

The passions of the human mind and physical constitution are an 
embodiment of our nature so mysterious in their element and charac- 
ter that, to rightly control and guide them onward through the stage 
of our physical existence, requires profound wisdom — ah ! it requires 
the wisdom of sages to rightly comprehend them, to curb them by 
self-control, and guide them through the dangers of youth as the expe- 
rienced mariner guides the ship free from the rocks, the shoals, and the 
quicksands which lie obscured in the mighty ocean ; for these passions 
of our nature and physical constitution are to the soul, to the life, just 
like so many obscure rocks and shoals in the ocean to the mariner ; 
and they become to us, like those to him, unless we understand the 
great chart of human life and health — can fathom its intricacies, know 
the thorns and briers which beset our path — the rocks on which we 
make shipwreck. Therefore, in the condition of civilized life at the 
present day, which is a very artificial one, we find that mankind 
instead of possessing accurate knowledge of the laws of life, health, 
and physical education, and their offspring being developed in accord- 
ance thereto, that they are prematurely ripened and their passions 
too early excited. As a gardener develops, by art, in a forcing-bed or 
green-house, with the combined power of artificial heat, a plant or a 
flower, and causes it to blossom early, so, in infantile life, childhood 
and youth are the men of the present age of the world. Their 
passions become a consuming fire, instead of becoming aids under 
right, judicious, proper management and culture, for the enjoyment 
of life and physical existence. 

To this end, in our narrative, do we see the sexual passion develop- 
ing Scrofula, and causing infinite suffering and physical devastation in a 
thousand obscure and wily forms of disease, sapping insidiously the 
fount of life itself by a morbid excitement of those organs designed by 
Omnipotent Wisdom, when used judiciously, for the laudable purpose 
of propagating and unfolding ourselves in our offspring throughout 
all eternity. 

To illustrate this point in our narrative of the development of Scrof- 
ula in manhood, we will introduce a cut here, of a patient whom we 
have treated, under one of those most appalling circumstances of 
combined diseases induced by early pandering to the passions, insidi- 
ously sapping the vitality of the system by silent drain made upon the 
sexual organs, producing caries of the spine to that extent, that ab« 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 



115 




scesses were discharged in 
three different places. The 
victim passed on from one 
stage to another, worse and 
worse ; from the ability of 
gentle labor and exercise to ex- 
treme debility and emaciation 
so great, that he became con- 
fined to his house and subse- 
quently to bed. Hectic fever 
ensued, night-sweats, restless- 
ness, cough, dryness of the 
throat and air-passages, tuber 
cular deposit in the lungs, and 
morbid appetite. And in this 
condition he had been seen and^ 
prescribed for (ineffectually) by 
twelve physicians ; among them 
were two professors of a cele- 
This cut represents true to life a subject of brated medical institution in 

Scrofula developed in youth by pandering to the Vermont ; but they all failed to 

passions, producing marasmus or wasting of the give him eith er relief Or cure. 

iuices of the blood, and thereby softening and T , . ,. . . 

- .. . . ., . . , . . In this condition the patient 

canes of the bones of the spine, inducing ab- r 

scesses and consumption at the age of twenty- wrote to US, or had a letter 
three years, which was arrested and cured written by his friends, stating 
under the treatment of Dr. Stone, of the Troy the case minutely in all its 
Lung and Hygienic Institute. bearings, and soliciting our 

advice in regard to the chance of any relief. A series of inter- 
rogatories were nicely replied to, the urine of the patient analyzed, 
and we gave (by letter) as our opinion, that we could restore the 
patient, even under this apparently hopeless condition. He paid our 
fee, and as the last ray of hope, placed himself under our discrimi- 
nating care. He was then several hundred miles distant. We found, 
from the history of the case, that, though in a state of hectic fever, and 
troubled with a severe cough and night-sweats, the patient was being 
fed (as he afterward confessed to us when he visited us at our Institu- 
tion) with hot pastries, and for his supper he would have fried dough- 
nuts, mince-pie, and warm bread and butter ; and when he narrated 
this, does the reader wonder at us because we occasionally sneer at that 
old antediluvian race of doctors known as the Allopaths ? We do so 
from the best motives ; and because we deem it a duty we owe in our 
professional capacity to suffering humanity — out of philanthropy 



116 PULMONAKY CONSUMPTION. 

and the benevolence of our nature; for we do know that they only 
prescribe for symptoms, and leave the laws of hygiene and dietetics 
entirely out of their prescriptions. Hence, we will ever contend against 
them, so long as they adopt this course, inch by inch, and so long as 
life endures ! For we are here to fulfill a mission which we have from 
kind heaven to wage war against such impositions and such quackery 
as is palmed off upon the community, to induce them to believe that 
they can be cured by taking drugs and medicines into their stomachs 
while in the condition this patient was in ; and for being allowed to be 
fed (by their permission) on such articles of cookery as pastries. If 
ever ingenuity was taxed to devise the means to poison the human 
race, and to pervert good health, it could not devise any thing more 
direct to accomplish it than the articles which this patient was allowed 
to use, when brought under our care. 

We corrected his errors of diet, and subjected him to the laws of 
•hygiene, in order to correct all the deranged functions of the body ; 
commencing with bathing of the skin every day, or twice a day, and 
producing an action of the bowels, which before had been torpid and 
inactive, we thereby corrected a morbid, deranged stomach, liver and 
digestive functions. We arranged our treatment to quiet and allay 
the irritability and exalted sensibility of his nervous system ; we gave 
gentle tonics, combined with proper solvents and correctives, for the 
poisons in his blood, and such other natural agents provided in the 
vegetable kingdom by nature, for such emergencies, that would act to 
stimulate the languid functions, and cause healthy secretions of the 
kidneys, which were then morbid and vitiated. For the disease of the 
throat, respiratory organs, and the lungs, we administered our medi- 
cines rationally, in the shape of inhalation by medicated vapors, and 
not by sending them upon a blind mission through the stomach, and 
thereby reduced his cough, overcame the irritation in the broncho- 
mucous membranes, arrested the tubercarlization or softening process 
in the lungs, and in eight weeks restored this patient from a sick-bed, so 
much so, as to enable him to ride out in the open air. This was in the 
winter. In the summer afterward, he was able to ride one hundred 
and seventy miles in the cars, and visit our Institution, and exhibit 
himself as a living monument of our skill, when consistently combined 
with science and the harmonious laws of nature. 

So striking was this cure, that the editor of the "West-Troy Demo- 
crat, who saw him personally, was induced to give this voluntary tes- 
timony : 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 117 

Case of Thomas P. Aboott — Striking Evidence of the Skill of Dr. Stone. 

We have had occasion frequently, in our editorial capacity, to speak of the 
great success of Dr. Stone, physician to the Troy Lung and Hygienic Institute, 
in curing Consumption and chronic diseases. We have had, to-day, an ocular 
demonstration of his skill, in the person of Thomas P. Abbott, of Windsor, 
Yt. Mr. Abbott is a young man of about twenty-four years of age. Last Janu- 
ary he was confined to his bed, with seven large abscesses on his back and spine 
— suffering extreme pain and restlessness — his limbs drawn up to his body, and 
prostrated to an extreme state of emaciation and debility, with a harassing 
cough. In this condition he was attended by many physicians of the neighbor- 
ing towns and vicinity, among them a distinguished professor in a medical 
school, all of whom gave his case up as utterly hopeless, and left him to die. 
In this forlorn situation he wrote and stated his case to Dr. Stone, and was in- 
duced by the Doctor's encouragement to adopt his treatment. Suffice it to say, 
that in two months' time Mr. Abbott had improved so much as to be able to 
walk out of doors. He has continually and steadily progressed under the Doc- 
tor's scientific and discriminating plan of treatment, so as to be able to ride to 
Troy a few days since, and exhibit himself in person to the Doctor for the first 
time. 

In the mean time two of the abscesses healed ; the excruciating pains have, 
in a great measure, subsided, as well as the cough. Any one that is longer 
skeptical of the great skill and success of Doctor Stone in curing obstinate 
chronic diseases, let them now go to the Institution and see and hear from the 
lips of Mr. Abbott, personally, as we ourselves have done, the almost miracu- 
lous improvement and restoration in so short a time, from what was considered 
a death-bed. 



US PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 



DIPHTHERIA AND PLASTIC BRONCHITIS. 

"While I am engaged in writing this work for the press, the whole 
country is pervaded to a most melancholy extent and direful fatality, 
with what is termed a new disease called Diphtheria. As we have 
before stated, in the symptoms of Tubercular Consumption, it is not 
unfrequcntly the case, but it is an every-day occurrence, often, for 
whole families, to the number of five or six children, to be rapidly 
swept off by this fatal disease. Measurably, it is characterized by 
symptoms very similar to what is called Membraneous Croup, but is 
very different in its nature, in the majority of cases, from Membrane- 
ous Croup. 

It is not probable that Diphtheria is a new disease, only that the 
various forms of diseases which affect the mucous membranes of the 
throat and air-passages have become so frequent, so numerous, and so 
fatal in the United States, that this circumstance has led medical men 
well posted in their department to be more accurate in their scientific 
diagnosis. Diseases of the same character prevailed in this country, 
to equally as fatal an extent, some twenty-five or thirty years ago, as 
an epidemic, ravaging communities with its fatality, and spreading 
death and dismay wherever it went. 

The identity of putrid sore-throat, which made such fearful ravages 
in Albany and other places a quarter of a century ago, with this 
present malady, seems now to be settled. That malady was char- 
acterized by well-marked typhoid symptoms, and this indication has 
its counterpart in the extreme prostration of the Diphtheria of the 
present day ; namely, in the most alarmingly prostrating symptoms at 
its first onset. Like Croup, it is accompanied by the formation of 
false membranes in the windpipe, which, if left to themselves, accumulate 
until the air-passages are closed up, and death ensues. But the false 
membranes of Croup are an exudation of natural lymph from the ves- 
sels and mucous membranes, which are stimulated to excess by a high 
febrile condition of the tissues ; while, on the other hand, Diphtheria 
is scarcely ever febrile in its pathology, and its false membranes arc the 



DIPHTHERIA AND PLASTIC BRONCHITIS. 119 

result of a sloughing off, rather than an exudation of the mucous coat- 
ing. Croup belongs to the inflammatory type of disease ; Diphtheria, 
save in exceptional cases, does not. In Croup, the breath of the pa- 
tient is usually untainted ; in Diphtheria, the breath is characterized 
by a peculiar, and sometimes almost intolerable fetor. The lymphatic 
discharges of Croup are seldom acrid ; the discharges from the nose 
and mouth of the diphtheritic patient are ichorous and excoriating to the 
highest degree. Croup is not particularly prostrating to the general 
strength of the person attacked by it ; Diphtheria is invariably accom- 
panied with extreme debility and a loss of muscular as well as nervous 
tone, which often continues for months after the immediately danger- 
ous symptoms have been overcome. Finally, Diphtheria is contagious ; 
Croup is not. 

It will be seen from these details, that Diphtheria and Quinsy, or 
quinsy sore-throat, have more intimate points of resemblance than 
Diphtheria and Croup. 

In certain cases this resemblance is greatly increased by a complica- 
tion of the false membraneous symptom of Diphtheria with malignant 
inflammation of the tonsils ; still the false membraneous symptom is, 
of course, always sufficient to distinguish from Quinsy, to the prac- 
ticed eye. 

If the reader is not accustomed to witness the distressing features 
that characterize Membraneous Croup, and the melancholy spectacle 
which the medical practitioner is but too often called upon to witness, 
when death ensues in that very mechanical manner, by the blocking up 
of the larynx and the windpipe, from the accumulations of false mem- 
branes, and the other attendant constitutional irritation, let him read 
the graphic description of it in the section on " The Causes for Tuber- 
cular Consumption," and its connection in its nature with that fatal 
destroyer. 

Equally as distressing, in many instances, are the deaths in Diph- 
theria, but not so generally in this respect, namely, owing to the 
early depression and complete prostration of the energies of the brain 
and nervous system and the vitality of the body, which has been pro- 
duced, as you will understand, from a more subtle and malignant 
cause than that which produced Membraneous Croup. Hence, in a 
case of death by diphtheria, we are not called to witness the awful, 
distressing spectacles — the anxious expression, the rolling eye — to the 
last moment, if not taken away suddenly by convulsions, seeming to 
demand from the physician, in the last agony of death, by ocular and 
arduous solicitation for relief, an assistance which science is not able to 
give ; for long before death takes place in Diphtheria, all power of ex- 



120 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

ternal recognition is lost; for the brain, the citadel of the soul, has been 
too much shocked to maintain to the last periods of existence all the 
feeling of vitality, and the agonies produced by the disease, as in Mem- 
braneous Croup. Although, in many instances of deaths from Diph- 
theria, the windpipe and bronchial tubes are obstructed by the accumu- 
lation of a false membraneous deposit, and to the eye of the spectator 
seems to denote a most distressing mechanical death by suffocation. 
It is merciful for the patient that he has lost his power of external 
sensibility to suffering. 

As the ultimate effects and physical manifestations of the two dis- 
eases are really very different, then, in their nature, so also must be 
the causes. The immediate exciting cause for Membraneous Croup is 
a sudden cold, from sudden changes in the atmosphere, exposure to 
dampness, and a consequent repelling of the temperature of the blood 
thereby from the external surface and the extremities inwardly, so 
that an inward inflammation or fever seizes the internal membranes of 
the larynx, the throat, and frequently the bronchia. 

But in Diphtheria the exciting cause is malarious or miasmatic ; in 
other words, a certain subtle poison in the atmosphere, as in Typhus 
or Typhoid Fever, Cholera, Intermittent Fever, that suddenly gives 
rise to this peculiar morbid effect or modification. Consequently the 
contagious nature of Diphtheria is owing to this malignant atmospher- 
ical cause in part. But the question again arises here, if the cause 
is in the atmosphere, and it pervades the whole country at once, more 
or less so, and is breathed alike by every person, why are not the 
atmospherical effects more general ? Why does it skip over certain 
towns, or families in towns, seize upon others, and not unfrequently 
sweep of a whole family at once ? 

These are very important questions — questions that involve the 
whole science of physical education, as it were, and complete the 
science of human life, physiologically speaking. 

We could answer this question directly, by citing the same coincid- 
ences and circumstances when Cholera pervaded the country and the 
world. So also has it been with every other epidemic. 

The reader will not fail to bear in mind the same chain of philoso- 
phy which we intend to apply to this epidemic (Diphtheria) that we 
have applied to Tubercular Consumption. Why does death sit back, 
as a great strategist, looking keenly and watching discriminatingly to 
seize upon his victim, here and there, so unawares, laying waste whole 
families, as in Tubercular Consumption — selecting the fairest and most 
promising of earth — children whose intellects were so precocious as to 
afford the most powerful evidence of genius, and excite hopes in the 



DIPHTHERIA AND PLASTIC BRONCHITIS. 121 

doting parents and friends of prospects in the future, glowing with the 
magnificence of their conceptions? Ah! yes, why is this? For the very 
reason that I have ever endeavored to show ; namely, that \h<z predis- 
posing cause, mind you now, has been laid long, long back in a chain 
involving errors of living, errors by violating the absolute law of inhal- 
ing pure air, by the long-continued depression of the natural tempera- 
ture of the body, perverting the healthy condition of the blood, and 
thereby perverting also the healthy function of the stomach and whole 
digestive apparatus — that apparatus which is only capable of convert- 
ing healthy food into healthy chyme, chyle, and blood, to nourish, 
build up, and sustain the whole organism, which, when connected, 
alone can form the complete machinery of evolving good health, by 
possessing, within itself, all those requisite materials and elementary 
principles therein named which are now perverted. 

Hence this condition of the atmosphere — the air of heaven which 
surrounds us, and which in certain seasons of the year and at certain 
times is filled with noxious vapors and gases capable of striking death 
and dismay — like cholera and the other epidemic diseases before 
alluded to — wherever it finds a victim in a fit condition to become its 
receptacle. Here the reader, here the fond mother, as she reads 
this section, will find, and we fear, too, sources for sad reflection, the 
cause for the unexpected blighting of her hopes in the sudden loss of 
her offspring by death, so little anticipated, by this fell destroyer, 
Diphtheria, as depicted in the same way that Tubercular Consumption 
selects its victims unawares, silently, insidiously, and without sus- 
picion. 

Diphtheria is caused by errors in living, but above all others, in three 
ways — namely, the breathing of confined, vitiated air ; the depression 
of the natural temperature of the body, for the want of prudent and 
proper clothing ; and the deficiency of proper food, which produces 
such entire derangement of the stomach and digestive organs, which, 
we have ever said, is the grand laboratory for preparing the pabulum 
of life,the blood, to make it healthy and pure for the sustenance of the 
body, and of those organs and functions, and for preserving them in 
healthy integrity. In these three ways, then, and more too, had we 
time and space to enumerate them, the blood, the pabulum of life, is 
perverted ; it is impure, and in that unfit condition can not maintain the 
lungs, the heart, and the whole physical machinery in a state of good 
health. Being in this condition, every such person becomes negative 
to this state of the atmosphere, and being negative, (instead of in a 
positive condition which good health would leave them in,) they 
become fitting receptacles to nourish this miasmatic cause inhaled in 



122 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

their breath ; it is nursed and nurtured in the blood, and in the system, 
from its unhealthy and poisoned condition, thereby giving rise to those 
morbid congestions in the mucous membranes of the tonsils, throat, 
larynx, and air-passages, which cause the false membranes, and ulti- 
mately its sloughing off and filling up of the air-passages; so if not 
removed by the skillful assistance of art, it terminates in death. Tins 
is why the cause which pervades the whole country, and is inhaled 
almost equally alike by every person, is developed in some, while 
others are not at all affected, but escape harmlessly ; namely, because 
their organism is more perfect ; it is in a better state of integrity, from 
a more healthy condition of the blood and the other different organs 
and functions ; and because those who escaped not equally alike 
breathe the local, vitiated, confined state of atmosphere that the 
others do who fall victims to it. 

But there is one just though very serious reflection which comes 
up here, that involves the faculty generally, in their deficiency in not 
being prepared for the emergencies that such epidemics demand. In 
this respect, the faculty have ever sought to keep the people in igno- 
rance as to the true sources of human health, giving them, as we have 
before said, to understand that they might " live as they list," and 
then when sickness came upon them, they had only to call upon them, 
that they possessed it in their pockets and saddle-bags, or it could be 
obtained at the drug-shop, from a simple recipe written in mongrel 
Latin. 

But the great moral lesson to be taught to such people and the 
world, in the majority of instances, for placing such implicit confidence 
in doctors, is taught them in the awful devastation that occurs when 
these epidemics sweep, broadcast as it were, over a whole country ; 
then they find that the combined skill of the whole fraternity seems to 
be mocked in their false pretensions, and their inefficiency to meet the 
emergencies of the diseases which they are then, in their capacity, 
called upon to evoke. This has ever been the case in preceding epi- 
demics — the cholera for instance ; medical men, when consulted, 
placed their reliance upon their medicines — their poisons, calomel, 
antimony, or bleeding and blistering, as has been done in Croup, or 
leeching and exhausting the vitality of the patient, instead of relying 
upon the fulfillment and maintenance of the absolute laws of life and 
health which was decreed by the Almighty fiat. 

Such was the case in Asiatic cholera, when it spread its insidious 
wiles through Europe and the United States ; the faculty, with some 
noble exceptions, (the illustrious Caldwell, of Lexington, Ky., for in- 
stance, was an exception,) devised quarantines and military cordons to 



DIPHTHERIA AND PLASTIC BRONCHITIS. 123 

be established upon our sea-ports, to cut off the spread of the con- 
tagious poison which existed in and goes through the atmosphere, and 
to suppress that contagion which, in the significant language of the 
learned Dr. James Johnson, " could with one fell bound jump over 
them with as much ease as the wolf vaults over the palisades of a 
sheep-fold." 

But the moral reflection will come in spite of us, in spite of science 
and philosophy which some devotees will ever possess themselves of; 
for it has ever been our doctrine, in this noble department of our pro- 
fession, that however blind and ignorant the great mass of mankind 
are, in regard to the imperative laws that sustain their lives and health, 
God never has left his cause without a witness, as in the days of the 
Israelites, when the great mass of the people were left in ignorance, 
blindness, and bondage, one witness was found (Moses) to deliver 
that benighted people ; so, we hope in the present era of the world, 
when the great mass of our American people are now not only trem- 
bling in physical degeneracy, but trembling, too, as it were, upon 
the awful pinnacle of political and civil ruin, amid the conflict with 
sword, bayonet, and weapons of warfare and destruction — hurling ruin, 
rapine, and devastation over the land, and destroying thousands of lives 
to sustain — what ? To sustain a boasted Republic that has not exist- 
ed eighty years ! but which still in that brief space of time has fer- 
mented the world with jealousy at its wonderful discoveries in art 
and science ; in rapid and social progress too. But alas ! amid their 
seeming security, they little dreamed of the contingencies and dangers 
which lay around them like some monster serpent in ambush, insidi- 
ously winding his coils, when thrown off their guard by the allurements 
of their prosperity, which served alike to blind their moral capacities 
to the results that were inevitably coming on, while they labored under 
the false delusion of their seeming prosperity. Ah ! it teaches a great 
moral lesson — that nations are but one individual in their allegiance to 
and their subjection to the consequences of the violation of the same 
great laws. Prosperity, in a pecuniary and social point of view, brings 
with it its direful consequences ; then, as we have before said, the moral 
faculties are soothed into inaction, and become oblivious, in the false 
glare of such prosperous development and such resources, which serve 
to pander to their appetites and their passions. In fact, such a redun- 
dant prosperity only serves to lead the masses by the position that 
wealth and art gives, to become dead to the moral faculties, and to the 
forget fulness of higher objects. 

We too should have profited by the lessons history has taught us in 
reference to preceding nations — republics of the earth, that possessed 



124 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

equally and to as great an extent the same blessings of art and worldly 
prosperity that we do now ; and possessed, too, a greater length of 
time, the boasted privileges of a republican form of government ; that 
they have alike fallen by pandering to their appetites, passions, and lux- 
urious habits of living. Our luxurious habits and the pandering to our 
perverted appetites and passions have allured us from the due consid- 
eration of our responsibility to the physical laws which we have most 
grossly violated ; and have alike been the cause of our physical degene- 
racy and national ruin. 

People must learn the moral lesson, therefore, that they must look to 
themselves, to be their own protectors against the sad inroads of dis- 
ease, whether it shall come in miasmatic causes or the more immediate, 
momentary violation of the tangible laws of health ; instead of trusting 
their lives and their health to old-fogy practitioners. 

It is for them to know and understand (which it is readily in their 
power to do) the laws of health, and observe them, to escape the conse- 
quences of epidemic diseases. Hence, in Diphtheria, as in all other 
preceding epidemics, as we begun to say, physicians, at the first onset 
of its awful fatality, are found to be inefficient for the emergencies, and 
though every one has some new remedy or nostrum — every paper that 
is opened is publishing some cure, some boasted specific for this insidious 
and wily disease — it is the hight of absurdity and folly to suppose that 
they can be cured by any specific found in medicine, or quantity of 
medicines, to compensate for having violated so long the imperative 
laws of life and health, which has put the blood — the pabulum of life 
— into this morbid condition, becoming a nidus of that miasmatic or 
ethereal virus which acts unseen by mortal eye, only when it has so 
completely saturated the body, and secured its victim within its fatal 
grasp, steeping the moral faculties in oblivion, consigning him to an 
early and melancholy grave, which is a condign punishment that God 
has in view in his economy of government — that when a law is violated, 
the punishment will, of necessity, come, whether it be moral, physical, 
or any other — a punishment for neglecting to know and revere those 
laws of their being — laws designed for the development of the better 
faculties and principles of our nature, and to increase our happiness in 
the possession of humility of soul and the superior government of 
wisdom over passion, lust, and arrogance. 

Hence, to carry out the moral reflection and instruction inculcated 
thereby, in Asiatic Cholera and all other epidemic contagious diseases, 
quarantines and military cordons, under the spread of science, are done 
away with, and but a little time will elapse before some brilliant light of 
modern science in the medical department will teach you the equally 



DIPHTHERIA AND PLASTIC BRONCHITIS. 125 

as great absurdity of looking to pills and potions, to old-fogy doctors, 
or to any medical recipe, for safety or protection against this subtle 
fatality of Diphtheria. 

But while we feel that we are but an agent in the economy of divine 
Providence, to convey just, moral, and intellectual light to your com- 
prehension for the cause of such mysterious fatalities that now invade 
you, and fill your homes and houses with gloom, we feel, too, that 
while we teach you these cutting truths, that we administer all the 
balm that science and intelligence affords. 

You will ask, then, in the anguish of your trouble and necessity : 
What, is there no balm in Gilead ? Is there no physician there ? 

I admit my ignorance now of the cause. I am thankful for the 
light. But has God not provided in the mysteries of his economy some 
antidote, some remedy for these poisons and these wounds which are 
now inflicted upon me ? I grant that much can be done in many in- 
stances, when instantly taken in season, to arrest the progress of this 
ocean which conceals such fatal disease, or judiciously, scientifically 
navigate the little frail bark through breakers, the surf, over the rocks, 
shoals, and quicksands which threaten to submerge and destroy it. 
How can this be done ? 



The only Scientific Treatment for Diphtheria and Plastic Bronchitis. The Eational 
Plan of Cure, based upon Natural Principles. 

The treatment of the disease proposes to itself two ends at least : 
First, to develop and sustain all the natural, vital, and nerve forces of 
the patient ; second, to rid the air-passages of the false membrane. 
For the attainment of the first end, nutritious, digestible food, being 
the most natural, is, of course, the best means ; strong beef-tea com- 
bines all the most desirable elements for such purpose, and should be 
given from the earliest stages of the disease, and when the fauces be- 
come closed by the disease, or the parts become too painful to admit 
of swallowing, it should still be given in the form of enemas, or anal 
injections, per rectum. Pure old French brandy, in judicious hands, 
is another stimulus of the highest value in Diphtheria. Iron in various 
forms has been administered with great success ; for the very reason 
that iron is one of the natural elements of the blood ; to restore it 
where it is deficient enables the system to possess it, for the purpose 
of oxygenating the blood, (as it has an affinity for oxygen,) and it be- 
comes to the blood the oxygen-carrier, thereby changing, as far as it 
is introduced, the diseased condition of this vital fluid. Perhaps the 
most efficient form in which it can be given is the sesqui-oxyd. By 



126 PULMONAKY CONSUMPTION. 

its action upon the blood in the way just spoken of, it sustains the 
general strength of the patient, arresting the tendency of the mucous 
membranes to throw off and check the diphtheritic slough. 

For the further attainment of the first proposition, chlorate of po- 
tassa is given with good results ; for it is rich in oxygen, and as far 
as it can be given and assimilated in the blood, it becomes another 
source for imbibing the oxygen and purifying the blood, and invigor- 
ating the inherent vital elements to resist the farther inroads of mem- 
braneous formation. It acts, again, by restoring the vital forces, to 
increase the tendency of the mucous membranes to throw off this 
foreign accumulation. 

For the attainment of the second end — namely, to rid the air-pass- 
ages of the false membranes — is the nice point in the chart, where the 
life of the victim is threatened, for the navigator to use skillful means 
to carry the patient free from the great danger of foundering. 

If we recollect rightly, twenty-five years ago, when the same disease 
prevailed to such an extent of mortality in Albany and various parts 
of the New-England States, under the name of putrid sore-throat, the 
old-fashioned old-school system of depleting, that is, bleeding from the 
arm, and reducing the patient's strength thereby, poisoning his blood 
with calomel and other mineral poisons peculiar to the old school, not 
one patient recovered. But we are happy to say that though the 
mass of medical men have their eyes still closed to the light of scien- 
tific inquiry, for the purpose of keeping themselves posted up, and to 
keep progress with the rapid strides and developments that - medicine 
has made, that there are some now who would not think of letting 
blood or giving these exhausting poisonous remedies for diphtheria. 

The second indication can only be fulfilled by the rational system of 
local treatment that we have advocated for Consumption and other 
diseases of the air-passages — namely, by inhalation. It may not be 
necessary in every stage of development that medicated inhalation 
should be adopted; but it does become absolutely necessary to insure 
the ejection of these false membranes, that they be kept in a perfect 
state of moisture, for every person can see that if this membrane is 
kept dry it will more closely adhere to the inflamed yet abraded sur- 
face, and the accumulations still go on, so that the victim inevitably 
would suffocate from the passages filling up. If the atmosphere of the 
patient's room can be kept constantly saturated with moisture from 
the evaporation in a suitable dish, as described in the preliminary re- 
marks of this book, where we have it illustrated with a cut in the form 




DIPHTHERIA AND PLASTIC BRONCHITIS. 127 

of a medicated air-chamber, and by other more 
direct means also, (should the patient's strength 
and age admit of it,) by hot-water medicated 
vapor inhalation, from the inhaler used by our 
Institution, as here figured in the cut. 

In many cases if the patient could be sus- 
tained until these false membranes were ejected, 
and the abraded surface underneath healed, a 
cure would result. Every thing depends upon 
this. If the patient is a child, and his strength 
is exhausted, direct medication in the form of 
i- our hot-water inhalations, would become but 
cated inhaler, used by the little practicable, for his distress would be so 
Institution for administer- great that he would not be able to close his 
ing vapors directly into lips upon the mouth-piece of the inhaler, and 
the throat and lungs. inbale su ffi c j ent vapor f rom the inhaler to keep 
up this continued moist condition of the false membranes, which is ne- 
cessary to be done. To obviate this inconvenience on the part of the 
patient, we advise that the atmosphere of the room of the patient be 
kept in a perfect state of moisture, on the borders of vapor itself. 
This can be done by placing a suitable broad dish over an alcoholic 
.lamp, near the bed of the patient ; then the apartment could be kept 
moist and well saturated with vapor to accomplish this purpose, with- 
out causing the temperature of the room to be kept too high for the 
good of the patient otherwise. But in case of extreme cold weather, 
evaporation can be carried on also by a dish being placed upon the 
stove. It is needless to remark, perhaps, again that the atmosphere of 
the room must be kept extremely moist, in a state of vapor, to prevent 
any liability of the membranes becoming dry. 

The officious interference of physicians in many instances has caused 
the immediate death of the patient, by trying to remove these mem- 
branes by force and causing hemorrhage. This should not be at- 
tempted. But, we repeat, if the patient's strength can be sustained 
sufficiently, as by the first indication, until this loosening process of the 
false membranes is accomplished, by saturating the room with vapor, 
then they will be easily expectorated and thrown off by the patient. 

We have referred in the head of this section to plastic bronchitis. 
Now, this plastic bronchitis is but another form of Diphtheria, as we 
have heretofore maintained that Diphtheria is no more than one of the 
obscure forms of Tubercular Consumption. The reader will pardon 
us for a little repetition when he understands thereby that it is for the 
specific purpose of giving him true light as to the primary cause or causes 



128 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

for external manifestations. In the almost innumerable symptoms that 
we have given for Tubercular Consumption, Scrofula, and the varied 
forms of throat and other diseases attending the air-passages, we have 
contended that they were but symptoms, or external manifestations of 
one grand cause, which laid long back in the great chain of physical or 
animal economy. Hence, if the reader does not keep this in view, he 
will lose sight of and fail to realize the great design of our labors in writ- 
ing this book — namely, to endeavor to have every one the arbiter and 
architect of his own health, and to look on symptoms, whether they 
be manifested in the shape of a false membrane of the larynx, of wind- 
pipe, or under another name of plastic exudation in the bronchial tubes, 
as meaning the same thing. Those physicians who wish to make them- 
selves appear learned, and look to the success of their craft by keeping 
their constituents and the mass in ignorance, adopt these high-sound- 
ing names for the purpose. But we assure the reader he should have 
better sense than to allow his judgment and reason to submerge in the 
sound of soft words or high-flown technicalities. 

Understand, then, that Diphtheria, or Diphtheritus, etymologically 
means nothing more than inflammation of a membrane, and was in- 
vented by Bretonneau, a French physician, to express that general class 
of diseases. So this plastic exudation, which occurs, in many instances, 
far down in the bronchial tubes — the branches of the windpipe — in the 
common, every-day cases of children, becomes a very common affection 
in more advanced periods of life, under the term of plastic bronchitis ; 
but it means just the same thing. It has been our good fortune to 
have many patients that have been afflicted with this plastic bronchitis. 

The results, when not early and skillfully treated, are equally as 
fatal as it is in those instances where the false membrane forms at the 
larynx and upper part of the trachea ; only when this specific complaint 
attacks adult people, or those far beyond the years of childhood, it is 
more liable to take on this exudation in the branches of the bronchial 
tubes in the lungs. Such was the case of the Hon. N. P. Tallmadge, 
who, two years since, was treated at our Institution the entire winter 
for a most aggravated affection of this nature. So great w 7 as the de- 
position of these false membranes, (plastic exudations,) that his life 
several times was in imminent danger from mechanical suffocation ; 
his breathing was laborious and distressing, and at times he required 
in the coldest winter all the air that he could have access to, to enable 
him to breathe. Successful treatment was adopted at our Institution 
by medicated inhalation, breathed direct from the inhaler ; and by 
keeping the atmosphere of his room saturated with medicated vapor 
throughout the entire winter, he was made to raise, in many instances, 



DIPHTHERIA AND PLASTIC BRONCHITIS. 129 

false membrances some eight (8) inches or more in length, which ex- 
uded from the branches of the bronchia, and were expectorated, after 
distressing efforts of coughing, produced by their irritation, resembling 
exact casts, as though they had been run in a mold, so nicely did they 
conform to the shape of the bronchial tubes from which they were ex- 
pectorated. 

Another case occurred in Mr. Garfield, of West-Troy, whose attack 
was very acute, occasioned by severe cold, which seriously invaded the 
lungs and the bronchial tubes. Such was the result of the formation 
of this plastic lymph, that his vital capacity, which before had been 
some two hundred and fifty inches, was reduced to about fifty inches. 
This case we treated, in the course of two months, with entire success, 
freeing the bronchial tubes from these plastic deposits, and restoring 
the patient's vital capacity and him to good health, which he has since 
enjoyed. 

The reflecting reader will see, then, that medicine, when adopted as 
a science, judiciously administered according to the indications of each 
case, applying the remedies scientifically and rationally where the dis- 
ease is located, at the same time correcting the morbid condition of 
the blood and the deranged state of the vital functions — then be- 
comes a noble profession, subject to improvement and to progress, ac- 
cording to natural laws, upon the same principles as we see in other 
arts and sciences, which are making such rapid strides ; and our faith 
in divine Providence is such, that we have reason to believe that it will 
progress until a knowledge of the laws that govern epidemic and con- 
tagious diseases are so understood, that timely prevention will be 
adopted against imbibing its effects, and thereby escape the melancholy 
consequences which now lead the weak and unthoughtful, at least, to 
a reflection upon the Almighty himself. 



130 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 



&mttttvAU Sttfiitm. 



BRONCHITIS. 

Although we have referred, in a preceding section, on a " slight 
cold" and its consequences, to what was the cause of Bronchitis and 
its seat, it is not sufficiently definite for the reader to understand what 
constitutes Bronchitis. As it is now met with every day, and plays 
an extensive part in the numerous cases of Consumption which are met 
with, a short section devoted to it, to enable the reader to comprehend 
all its dangerous tendencies, becomes very necessary. Bronchitis is 
of two forms, acute and chronic. As we meet with it in our every-day 
practice, being called to prescribe for that constant rasping effort, or 
disposition to clear the throat which so often greets the ear, dry, sonor- 
ous, or hollow cough, accompanied with soreness of the throat and la- 
bored breathing, and which is of a chronic character, which usually 
supervenes upon an ordinary cold, or catarrh. But it is often met 
with as an acute, violent attack, with symptoms of the most alarming 
character, becoming very dangerous in its nature, unless treated 
promptly by the most judicious modern methods, administered by 
warm, medicated vapors, combining the medicated air-chamber. 

An acute attack of Bronchitis follows a violent cold, closing of the 
pores of the skin, getting wet feet, or exposures to cold and dampness. 
It is an inflammation which seizes the lining membranes of the bron- 
chial tubes, that we have given a diagram of in the section on acute 
cold, which tubes pervade the whole lungs, and, consequently, it be- 
comes an inflammation of the lungs proper. The inflammation is often 
very intense ; the difficulty of respiration amounts to a sense of stran- 
gulation ; the lips and cheeks become purple, changing to a livid pale- 
ness ; the countenance is anxious in its expression ; the eyes have a wild 
stare, and a icold sweat starts out and stands in bead-like drops over 
the forehead. In aggravated cases delirium comes on, and the patient 
relapses into the stupor of death. The obstruction to the bronchial 
tubes is so great under these circumstances, that air enough can not be 
drawn through them to produce the change in the blood from venous 
to arterial. The circulation of the venous blood causes blueness of the 
lips and the pallor of the countenance, as it is the object of respiration 



BRONCHITIS. 131 

to change the blood from a dark to a bright red color, as we have ex- 
plained in oar section on the causes of Tubercular Consumption and 
the function of the lungs. This change is produced by the air in the 
lungs, and can not occur unless it has been received in sufficient quan- 
tity. The carbon which constitutes the impurity of the venous blood, 
poisons the entire system, and its action on the brain causes delirium, 
insensibility, and death. 

These are the symptoms of an extreme aggravated case, yet are 
often met with, and constitute, for the most part, what the allopathic 
physicians call pneumonia. But strictly speaking, pneumonia is an in- 
flammation confined to the air-cells, or portions of the lobules of the 
lungs, but which rarely takes place, however, without the inflammation 
having first commenced in the larger bronchial tubes, and extends 
downward through their more minute branches, into the portions of 
the air-cells which are found clustered around each minute branch, as 
grapes are clustered upon its stalk ; hence, the term acute bronchitis is 
far more correct. In milder or more modified stages, there is a great 
pain and tightness about the chest ; the breathing, of course, is mate- 
rially affected, from the highly irritable state of the lining membrane, 
and excitement of its surface by the air inhaled. The patient is inca- 
pable of deep inspiration, and not unusually the ordinary intervals are 
lessened to a great degree, so that he breathes softly and hurriedly. 
From the great irritability present, the local secretion becomes aug- 
mented in quantity and altered in quality; from being first thin it 
speedily acquires a firmness and thickness, that makes expectoration 
more difficult. It is no longer a colorless fluid, as is naturally exhaled 
from the membranes in a healthy condition, but assumes a diversity of 
tints, varying from yellow, blue, green, gray, and sometimes black, 
and often accompanied by streaks of blood, or blood that is dark in its 
appearance, indicating that it has laid for a length of time in the bron- 
chial tubes before it has been expectorated. The secretion of thick 
mucous matter is sometimes so great that the patient's life is threatened 
by suffocation. These accumulations in the air-passages cause respira- 
tion to be perverted with unusual noises — a murmur, a wheezing, crepi- 
tation, or rattling — by the current of air inhaled or expired mixing 
itself with the viscid or tough fluid deposited on the interior surface, 
as though the patient breathed (as, in fact, he does breathe) through 
froth. As the attack becomes more modified after the violence of the 
inflammation has been overcome or reduced, the means which nature 
employs to rid the bronchial tubes of their superabundant stifling secre- 
tions is by an expulsory cough — the spasmodic action of the muscles. 
But the cough attendant upon this complaint is chiefly consequent upon 



132 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

reaction, the secretions themselves enhancing the irritability already 
present ; and so great and painful becomes the symptom, that patients 
suffer intensely during the fits, the veins becoming tinged with a 
purple, the veins of the neck and temple swelling as though they 
would burst, the eyes red and protruding at each convulsive effort, 
and the whole body indicates general internal disturbance. Splitting 
headache and occasional drowsiness are common concomitants, and the 
fever symptoms of furred tongue, weak pulse, hot skin, and remitting 
sweats, are generally present ; emaciation follows, and the brain not un- 
frequently participates in the general derangement by congestion, and 
the most alarming symptoms are exhibited. If the debility which 
must ensue from this condition becomes considerable, and the accumu- 
lation of secretions great, the patient dies by suffocation — a mechanical 
death. 

When the attack begins to subside, neither the cough nor the se- 
cretions abate to any considerable extent, but less difficulty and less 
pain are experienced in the efforts of expectoration ; the severity of 
all the symptoms gradually but slowly fade one by one away, and 
though recovery takes place, it leaves a long debility, and the sufferer 
is ever after liable to easily excite a recurrence of the disease on every 
accession of cold. 

Where the season is favorable, the weather warm and dry, and 
where the patient is so unfortunate as to be subjected to allopathic 
treatment, which affords, at best, but a temporary relief, rarely curing, 
relapses are sure to occur, and the wet, cold weather is a powerful 
auxiliary to its reproduction in all its original severity, or, at all events, 
in a somewhat mitigated form. The common winter cough to which 
many invalids are subject, and which they as regularly anticipate as the 
season recurs, is nothing more than a gentle bronchitis in a chronic 
state. It is seldom, when it assumes this character, that the symptoms 
decrease with each new attack ; more frequently they become aggra- 
vated, and in the end prove fatal, by terminating, probably, in Con- 
sumption, 

TEEATMENT OF THE ACUTE STAGE. 

In this disease, as well as in Tubercular Consumption, and many 
other inflammatory diseases of the chest, has the practice of the old- 
school physicians been equally as fatal, for it has ever been based upon 
wrong principles. Their treatment has been blood-letting, leeching, 
nauseating doses of tartar-emetic, thereby prostrating the vital ener- 
gies of their patients, and causing death, in the large majority of in- 
stances, by such mal-practice, when, had the patients been left to the 



BRONCHITIS. 133 

efforts of nature, with good nursing, their chance of recovery would 
have been much greater. Weakness is one of the chief characteristics 
of this complaint ; therefore the greatest caution should be used against 
every depleting form of treatment which would increase the prostra- 
tion of the patient. On the other hand, the most scrupulous attention 
should be paid to supporting the strength of the patient by proper nu- 
trition, in a liquid form, aided by the best plans of nursing. 

The medical treatment, as we have before said, should be made direct 
(if the case will admit of it) by inhaling warm, medicated vapors from 
an inhaler ; but where the difficulty of breathing and distress of the 
patient is too great to admit of direct inhalation, the atmosphere of the 
patient's room should be saturated with vapor evaporated from a 
broad dish over an alcohol-lamp, or set upon a stove, as directed for 
our medicated air-chamber in other cases. The vapors administered 
in this manner will often assuage the most distressing symptoms, and 
enable the invalid to expectorate the morbid matter that is secreted, 
and which his strength is insufficient to eject unassisted. 

In children in the United States, acute Bronchitis is a very common 
and a very prevalent disease, occasioned by a great recklessness on the 
part of their parents or nurses in their clothing and general hygiene. 
We need not repeat here, what we have so explicitly dwelt upon in a 
preceding section, in regard to the great recklessness respecting the 
cause for croup and other inflammatory diseases, occasioning such an 
awful sacrifice of the innocents. The manner in which infants and child- 
ren in the early years of life are exposed about the neck, upper part of 
the chest, arms, and lower limbs, to the inclemencies of our bleak 
northern winters, it can not be otherwise, in the economy of nature, but 
that they will be greatly subject to inflammatory diseases of the lungs, 
and death, for the most part, must be inevitable in the present state of 
society and the absurd notions that govern those who have been the 
means of bringing them into existence, for no respect is paid to the 
law of life and health with them, when it clashes with their notions of 
pride and the caprice of fashion. Bronchitis, therefore, in its acute 
stages, occurs more frequently in early childhood than in more advanced 
age. Such is the case in all parts of the civilized world, where the ca- 
price of fashion is made to ride rough-shod over the omnipotent laws 
of life and health. Thus we find by the statistics in Paris, that out of 
two thousand four hundred and thirty-one deaths from this disease, 
registered in the metropolis, eight hundred and eighty-eight were of 
children under five years of age. 

We have no doubt that the statistics in the United States would be 
equally as great, if drawn from our experience in fifteen years of active 



134 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

general practice. We well recollect in one week, in the city of Brook 
lyn, where we were practicing some years ago, of being called to visit 
seven children, between two and three years of age, who were suddenly 
taken down with this alarming and fatal malady, namely, acute Bron- 
chitis, and in each one of these cases the cause for the disease was the ex- 
posed, fashionable manner in which they were dressed ; for there was 
not one of them but was so clad as to leave the upper part of the 
chest, entire arms, and part of the lower limbs completely naked. 
Owing to this imprudent manner of dressing and the sudden changes 
of the weather, the blood had been made to recede from the surface, 
thereby producing congestion and active inflammation of the windpipe 
and bronchial tubes in each one of these cases. Two of them involved 
acute laryngitis, and one of them expired in all the horrors and ago- 
nies which peculiarly characterize that distressing and fatal complaint, 
which we have before alluded to under its proper head, wherein we 
mentioned that Washington, and many other distinguished men in 
more advanced periods of life, had fallen victims to the same fatal 
malady. 

In most instances where we attended these children above spoken 
of, we took occasion, in the benevolence of our nature, to point out the 
causes to our constituents and patrons, that their sickness had been 
occasioned by the fashionable, and what we should have termed reck- 
less, mode of clothing and care on the part of their parents. Instead 
of receiving expressions of thankfulness and gratitude for the good 
motives which led to our advice, we were contemned in more than one 
instance, and told that they would rather lose their children than to 
dress them unfashionably , and in every one of these instances, their 
wishes in this respect were realized, however satisfactory to the silent 
eludings of their conscience afterward we know not. 

Chronic Bronchitis. 

Chronic Bronchitis assumes a number of different forms, as it is 
very generally met with, being the sequel of a neglected cold, when 
not accruing upon one of those violent attacks which we have above 
depicted. Its approaches are silent and gradual ; the patient will dis- 
cover that his breath is becoming shortened or made much quicker on 
any unusual effort ; he has a silent and, to him, unnoticed cough, and 
when his attention is attracted to it, it is so short and so peculiar in 
its character, being more of an effort unconsciously to clear the air- 
passages of something that seems to him to obstruct free respiration, 
than to be in reality a cough ; and when he is warned of it by a friend 



BRONCHITIS. 135 

or a bystander, he will deny having any cough, yet, perhaps in a mo- 
ment or short space of time, will make an effort to cough. Such is 
one of the peculiar features of Chronic Bronchitis. In many instances, 
the air-passages are extremely dry, owing to the chronic inflammation 
in the mucous membrane and its glands, suppressing the natural moist- 
ure essential to keep them in an easy and healthy condition. 

As the stage progresses, (if not cured,) he at length becomes sub- 
ject to hectic fever, perhaps alternated with chills, as is characteristic 
of Tubercular Consumption. Especially is this the case with all those 
subjects who inherit a predisposition to Tubercular Consumption ; for 
in that case Bronchitis is sure to develop the latent tubercular disposi- 
tion, and both being combined together, are almost sure to terminate 
fatally — at least under the old system of treatment. 

As the stage still further progresses, the patient's breathing becomes 
still more laborious ; his cough becomes more audible, more noticeable, 
and more harassing. The cough, in this peculiar form, where the mem- 
branes are dry, gives forth a very hollow, ringing sound, occasioned 
by the thickening of the membranes, they, in that condition, becoming 
better conductors of sound, on the same principle of a hollow reed. 

SECOND STAGE. 

In the second stage, instead of the membranes of the bronchia 
being dry, and the patient constantly making efforts to rasp and clear 
his throat from this dry condition, there is a superabundance of secre- 
tion. In the earlier part of this peculiar stage, the secretion is thin 
and of a glairy, mucous nature ; the patient's strength is exhausted by 
the profuse quantity of expectoration, draining off the vitality of his 
blood in this manner ; he soon becomes weakened and emaciated 
thereby, and in the more advanced period, hectic fever and night- 
sweats set in, as in the preceding stage. But it is frequently the case 
in this second stage, as it advances, for the expectoration to become 
somewhat lessened, but increased in its thickness and tenacity ; espe- 
cially if successful treatment is not adopted seasonably, the termina- 
tion is almost invariably in ulceration. 

THIRD STAGE. 

There is still another stage apparently a combination of the preced- 
ing two, in which there is a blending, from an excess of dryness to an 
excess of secretion in a moderate manner, but of a gluey, tenacious 
character ; and for want of proper treatment to produce free expecto- 
ration from the small branches of the bronchia, many of them become 
blocked up entirely, thereby excluding air completely from portions of 



136 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

the air-cells. This condition taking place, increased action takes place 
as a consequence, adjoining these obliterated bronchial tubes and air- 
cells, in the neighborhood of the obstructed portions, they become 
greatly distended, likewise other bronchial tubes have become dis- 
tended in their character, to make up for the deficiency of those that 
were obliterated, increasing the sound of respiration to a very rough, 
grating, sonorous character, producing that puffing or asthmatic form 
of breathing, as will be noticed by many in a broken-winded horse. 
This condition of the lungs, following this disorganization or complete 
obstruction of the smaller bronchial tubes, and unduly increasing por- 
tions of air-cells, is denominated emphysema. 

FOURTH STAGE. 

Another form of Bronchitis, which is becoming very prevalent now 
in the United States in adults and those quite far advanced in years, 
is that form known as Plastic Bronchitis. We have given a short 
account of this in its appropriate place, in connection with Diphtheria, 
which it resembles very much, only it is not, strictly speaking, conta- 
gious, as is supposed to be the case with malignant forms of Diphtheria. 
But the exudations of plastic lymph — meaning the albumen of the 
blood — that substance resembling the white of an egg, which is no 
other, in one sense, than nature's glue, which is put out, when we re- 
ceive a fresh cut-wound, to heal the edges thereof — so in certain condi- 
tions of the system, when Acute Bronchitis takes place in the smaller 
branches of the bronchial tubes, the exudations of this albuminous 
material put out to that extent as to completely block them up ; and 
if skillful treatment is not at hand and efficiently carried out, the pa- 
tient dies a mechanical death, by the air-passages being choked or 
blocked up. 

As we have said, under its appropriate head, we have treated cases 
where we have succeeded in loosening and disengaging these false 
membranes, and caused them to be expectorated full eight inches in 
length, which assumed the exact appearance of a cast, as though they 
had been run in a mold. 

We do not wish to give unnecessary repetition, but as this work is 
expressly designed to enlighten the general reader in regard to the 
many diseases of the throat, air-passages, and lungs, which hitherto 
have been but very imperfectly understood, (even by physicians them- 
selves,) and this profound ignorance as to the nature and cause of 
these diseases has caused deaths to occur in innumerable instances 
that might have been saved could the subjects of them have been so 
informed as to have a comprehensive idea in regard to their dangerous 



BRONCHITIS. 137 

tendencies when let run — we will find our excuse, therefore, for this 
seeming repetition in our anxiety to have the reader understand that, 
were the proper means of discrimination used at the onset of these dis- 
eases by the newly discovered methods — namely, by the Pulmometer — 
the true condition of each patient's respiratory organs could be shown, 
to their ocular demonstration and perceptive faculties, in that light 
that they would be impressed with the danger of their situation when 
they are indulging false hopes, thinking that these early symptoms 
"will wear off, and attributing them to a cold, when it is silently gap- 
ing upon them, lessening their vitality, shortening their breath by the 
thickening of the membranes and mechanical obstruction to the tubes 
and air-cells in the manner above described. Hence, were they to 
subject themselves to a timely examination and discrimination of their 
case, in the philosophical manner done at our Institution, such patients 
might be treated with the utmost success, and saved from a early 
grave. Be it understood, then, that the danger of Bronchitis, in each 
and all of these chronic forms, consists in its being let alone at the 
commencement, when it could be easily and perfectly cured by our im- 
proved system of medicated inhalation, and let run until its termina- 
tion in death in the many forms that we have labored so hard to give 
you to understand ; and it becomes as fatal a disease as Tubercular 
Consumption itself, and in the United States is becoming far more 
prevalent, occasioned by the more artificial modes of life and the lux- 
urious habits of living. 

The manner by which the subject of Chronic Bronchitis is allured 
into a dangerous procrastination of arresting its progress by timely 
treatment, is on account of its apparent cessation, or otherwise great 
improvement during the warm season of the year, when the air is soft 
and balmy, relieving the bronchial mucous membranes of the continued 
irritation excited by the cold, damp air of the whiter and spring 
months, so that it is invariably reproduced every winter, and each 
succeeding attack becomes more aggravated, extending its fatal in- 
roads still more extensively, even if obscurely. In its flattering aspect 
and treacherous tendency it is a counterpart of inflammatory rheuma- 
tism, almost certain to relapse and return again, only the seat of it 
being at the vital organs, becomes still more dangerous ; therefore, 
every one affected with Bronchitis can not be too particular in regard 
to their hygiene ; to be thoroughly clad in flannel ; to guard with great 
caution against damp or cold feet. They should not go out in cold, 
damp, chilly weather, without wearing a Respirator over the mouthy 
in this northern climate. By the use of the Respirator, the cold 



138 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 



air is tempered and warmed in the mouth before it passes into the 
air-passages and the lungs; so much so by this useful instrument, 
that relapses might be prevented in hundreds of instances, where they 
now occur from the want of its use. So very changeable is our climate, 
that, on leaving home, even on a warm day, the subject of Bronchitis 
or chest diseases of any nature should not go any distance without 
taking the Respirator with him, in case a sudden change should occur 
to require it. By not adopting this precaution, many of our patients 
mjve taken severe relapse, and which, in some instances, proved fatal, 
who, previously, had been progressing to a complete cure under our 
system of treatment. 




Dr. Stone's Respiratpr. 



"We insert here a cut representing the Respirator, as worn by a 
gentleman and lady patient. It will be seen that it offers no incon- 
venience in its use — that it is not unsightly, but otherwise. The 
patient is enabled to hold free conversation with it over the mouth, 
even in the cold air, without any liability of the lungs becoming chilled. 

We will here introduce a few cases in evidence of the success of our 
methods of treatment for Bronchitis and diseases of the throat. 



BRONCHITIS. 139 

CASE 8 . 
The following letter from Dr. John Smith, a highly intelligent phy- 
sician, of the eclectic, modern, progressive school of medicine, a resid- 
ent of Trenton, Clinton Co., 111., will show to the reader that we have 
physicians even for our patients, whose intelligence and good sense 
does not deprive them of the opportunity to seek relief from us, when 
they find themselves, or their patients, incurable by their own means : 

Trenton, Clinton Co., May 5th, 1861. 

My Dear Doctor : When last I wrote you I was suffering with Diphtheria ; 
it commenced without any previous morbid feeling except that of having over- 
done myself, both mentally and physically, being alone here in a School of Re- 
form, opposed by a host of Allopaths and all the prejudice they can wake up in 
the minds of the people. 

For about eight years I had suffered with Chronic Bronchitis and Catarrh 
induced by organic lesion, in consequence of a severe attack of Pneumonia, 
which was suffered to run to an almost fatal termination at the time. Since 
then — during eight years — I had tried Allopathic remedies and my own reme- 
dies, to relieve my cough and difficulty of breathing, and all to no purpose. 
The fore-part of last winter, I was consulted by Mrs. Wise, of this place, 
similarly affected with an extremely bad cough, complicated with other mala- 
dies, which prostrated her very low. I told Mrs. Wise that I did not want to 
treat her case, and, to tell her the plain truth, I expected that she and I had to 
cough as long as we lived ; having done all that I could in my own case for my- 
self, I could not expect to cure her, and did not like to prescribe, when I could 
not expect to do her good. I therefore recommended her to put herself under 
your care, and try your system of inhalation and other remedies, which I knew 
nothing of, but told her that I intended to try myself. 

Suffice it to say, Mrs. Wise adopted my advice, gave me credit for my candor, 
and put herself under your care. It was not over six weeks before she was re- 
stored to very good health — her cough entirely cured — which led me to adopt 
your treatment in February last. The effect of your inhalants in my case 
seemed to work like a charm, in relieving the cough and the great difficulty of 
breathing which I had labored under. 

In addition to my other ailments, the kidneys were affected — no doubt from 
the use of limestone water, the urine precipitating large quantities of it — which 
I had ascribed to old age, being in my seventy-third year. Your oxygenated 
solvents and tonics had the effect that, to me, was perfectly astounding, in re- 
moving the kidney derangement. Although I was not dyspeptic, the bowels 
became somewhat relaxed, and the alvine discharges assumed an ash-color from 
torpor of the liver ; but in a short time after the use of your correctives, the 
alvine discharges took on an appearance manifesting a healthy state of that 
viscus. My appetite increased until it was a real pleasure to eat, but, of course, 
the luxury, too, of a full, deep, and free respiration was the grand climax. My 
strength increased, and I began to take on flesh, so that in a short lime my wife 
said she did not know me. JonN Smith, M.D. 

To Andrew Stone, M.D., Physician to Troy Lung and Hygienic Institute. 



140 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION". 

The Banner of Liglit, a paper published in Boston, of a liberal, pro- 
gressive character, having, by the way, a wide circulation, and edited 
with great ability, in publishing the foregoing from Dr. John Smith, 
made the following comments upon the same, which was a voluntary 
tribute; from the many evidences of our cures, in this class of maladies, 
which they themselves were possessed of: 

11 We have heretofore published certificates of the wonderful cures wrought 
by the inhaling of cold, medicated vapors, as administered by Dr. Stone, of the 
Troy Lung and Hygienic Institute. The foregoing is a description of a case of 
Bronchial Consumption as cured by Dr. Stone, and we are happy to give it 
place, knowing that too much can not be said of his wonderful cures." 

The following is an editorial voluntarily written and published by 
L. B. Monroe, editor of the Spiritual Age, Boston, Mass. : 

TROY LUNG AND HYGIENIC INSTITUTE. 

In these days, when the most ignorant pretender can puff himself into noto- 
riety, it is difficult to distinguish the claims of genuine merit from the assump- 
tions of charlatanry. Above all is this true of the medical profession. The 
mystery which has been thrown about the healing art for ages past, has served 
as a cloak which might cover the shallowest ignorance, or hide the most arrant 
quackery. A recipe in mongrel Latin has procured for the sick man what, for 
aught he knew, might be a brown-bread pill or a dose of virulent poison. 
Blindly the dose has been swallowed ; and whatever ill results ensued the suf- 
ferer has ascribed to the disease, not to the blunder of the doctor. If there was 
vitality left in the patient, a new experiment followed ; to be repeated indefi- 
nitely as circumstances might allow. If persistent nature held the breath in the 
bod}' - , in spite of pills and potions, the credit was all the doctor's; but if dis- 
ease and deadly doses finally carried off the victim, it was "a case baffling the 
eminent skill of the physician " — of course there was no chance for blame. 
Thus stupid empirics or consummate quacks with "M.D." appended to their 
names, have stood a fair chance with gifted men and careful students of the hu- 
man organism. 

This professional craft is a trick of aristocratic power to shield itself and keep 
the masses in ignorance and subjection. But the spirit of modern progression 
is opposed to this monopoly on the one hand and blind subserviency on the 
other. It is beginning to be felt that a man has a right to know in whom and 
in what he trusts his life. The mysterious " R," " Q. S.," etc., are no longer 
regarded as infallible signs of wisdom in him who scrawls them for the apothe- 
cary ; and a man must show some other credentials than an Allopathic diploma 
to establish his right to ticket us to the next world on the mercurial express- 
train. "We demand common-sense first; then that peculiar aptness which 
makes the doctor such, as it were, by instinct. All the medical schools in the 
world will not make a physician of the numskull, nor even of the man of 
talent whom Nature never designed for such a purpose. Some persons are born 
to be doctors — have a natural gift for the healing art — as others to be poets or 



BRONCHITIS. 141 

musicians. Such a person is Dr. Andrew Stone, of the Troy (N. Y.) Lung 
and Hygienic Institute. He enters into his work with a zest derived only from 
a love of the profession and a genuine satisfaction in doing good to his fellows. 
He is something of an enthusiast, as is every man whose natural genius inspires 
him in his art. With a regular education in the Allopathic school of practice, 
he has had the courage and good sense to discard its absurdities and adopt a 
method of his own, such as an experience of twenty years has confirmed. The 
success which has followed his practice has been such as to commend him to 
the confidence of all who may need his services. There is a class of diseases 
developed by our climate and modes of life, among which are affections of the 
throat and lungs, which Dr. Stone makes a specialty ; and it is for the treatment 
of such complaints that he has established his Institute. 

The writer of this is one who has enjoyed the benefits of this Institution ; and 
he feels that he shall not be obnoxious to the charge of newspaper puffing, in 
paying this voluntary tribute to true worth and professional skill. We have a 
higher object in view — that of calling the attention of invalids to this Institu- 
tion, where they may feel confident their cases will be met with a rational treat- 
ment which will insure relief, or effect a cure, whenever their complaints have 
not passed beyond the reach of medical science. 

Yet the Doctor does not profess to work miracles. He prescribes a judicious 
course of hygienic treatment, which, if faithfully followed, restores the energies 
and renews the functions of the organs ; thus establishing health by eradicating 
disease, not transferring it from one organ to another, as is done in many of the 
old modes of treatment. Those invalids, therefore, who are disposed to use sensi- 
ble means in a sensible way to restore their health, are confidently referred to 
Dr. Stone as a safe counselor, and to his Institution as affording the means 
desirable for securing to them that first of earthly blessings — sound health. 

It is some four years and a half since Mr. Monroe consulted us per- 
sonally at our Institution, with a severe complicated affection, embody- 
ing an enormously elongated uvula and severe chronic inflammation of 
the larynx, together with extensive Bronchitis pervading the whole 
lungs, and the fauces or back part of the mouth was ulcerated. He 
had suffered, to a greater or less extent, with these complicated diffi- 
culties for several years, had twice visited Paris for his health, and 
returned somewhat benefited, but not cured, and had applied to many 
other physicians, and adopted many other forms of treatment without 
success, previous to consulting us. We at once removed the elong- 
ated uvula, prepared a proper medicated throat- wash, and subjected 
him to a course of treatment by our cold system of medicated inhala- 
tion. Some four months after, Mr. Monroe had so far recovered from 
this severe disease as to give us the above flattering tribute of our 
skill and success in his case. His vocation being that of teacher of 
elocution and music, calls into great exercise the larynx and vocal 
organs, which thereby occasionally subject him to renewed irritation 



142 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

if he is so unfortunate as to take cold ; consequently he keeps our 
vapors by him more or less of the time, frequently making orders for 
them. He assures us, in a letter received from him the 26th January, 
1862, that they still have the same good effect to relieve the disease 
whenever it returns, and to mitigate the irritation produced by every 
exertion in his professional capacity. He writes farther, that his con- 
fidence and faith are so great in our system of medicated inhalation for 
diseases of the throat and lungs, he would desire very much a know- 
ledge of how to compound them for himself and his own immediate 
friends. In his last letter, he says : " I permit you to refer any one to 
me for the benefit that I have received from your treatment." 

Striking Case of Aggravated Throat and Lung Disease, Cured by Inhalation. 

About three years ago, Mr. McChesney consulted us in regard to a 
severe throat and lung affection ; he was extremely hoarse, his voice 
had nearly failed him ; speaking only in a low and hoarse whisper ; 
he had a harassing cough, which produced great soreness in the chest, 
complicated with inflamed fauces and disordered condition of the 
stomach and assimilative functions. He was placed under our system 
of Cold Balsamic Medicated Inhalation, with External Applications 
of Embrocation, and correctives for the disordered digestion and as- 
similation. His improvement commenced immediately, but as he had 
determined on going to California to fulfill an engagement, we advised 
a change to that climate, which, together with our treatment, com- 
pleted an entire cure of what was a most aggravated case, as his letter 

will show : 

New-York Ranche, California, March 14th, 1860. 
Dr. Stone, of the Troy Lung Institute : 

Dear Sir : If I remember right, when I left Troy, now two years ago, I 
promised to write and inform you what influence your medicines had on my 
complaint. When I left, I was very weak, thin in flesh, and harassed by a con- 
tinual cough, and a very sore and dry state of the throat, larynx, and windpipe. 
Now I am strong and robust, and perfectly free from any cough whatever. I 
attribute this cure, first, to your treatment by inhalation of medicated vapors, 
and your remedies, aided by the climate here. Whenever I take a cold, I find 
that a few minutes with the Inhaler is very beneficial. Two of my friends, for- 
merly from Philadelphia, were to see me to-day, both troubled somewhat in the 
same way, and I have recommended them to your treatment, and they requested 
me to order a course for them both. 

I am, dear sir, most truly yours, 

J. B. McChesney. 



ASTHMA. 143 



jffititttGb 'BMUil 



Asthma or Spasmodic Difficulty of Breathing, 

There may be, perhaps, a few of my readers who have read the 
history of the Wandering Jew, by Eugene Sue, wherein is depicted 
the history of an individual under such peculiar state of mind, or tem- 
perament of the nervous system, that his impulses to travel and to wan- 
der were such, that they knew no restraint. He had a longing and in- 
stinctive desire to visit every notable, excitable place on the continent, 
if not on the globe ; and when he arrived at the anticipated place, he 
felt no relief ; yet was compelled by the inward monitor to a still on- 
ward course, without knowing any reason why. 

This will serve as a brief yet romantic history of what may be called 
Spasmodic or Nervous Asthma. The patient when seized with an at- 
tack, feels that instinctive desire and longing for air that he can not re- 
sist; and the incidents or circumstances which momentarily compel 
him to gasp, as it were, for every breath of air that can be obtained, 
are perfectly inexplicable to himself. 

Should it be the first paroxysm or attack, and he has had no very 
premonitory symptoms of it, it is continued with remarkable appre- 
hension and fear, for the most part, especially should this occur in 
the night, and the patient be alone by himself ; for the shortness of 
breath, or difficulty of breathing comes on so very suddenly, that death 
by apparent strangulation or suffocation, for want of external air, seems 
to be manifest to him. 

It rarely occurs that an attack of Asthma comes on without previous 
warning. Occasional instances are known. But most commonly those 
who are subject to it, have some warning of an approaching paroxysm. 
The most usual precursory symptoms are a feeling of general languor 
and oppression, yawning, heaviness of the head or drowsiness, flatu- 
lent distension of the stomach, a feeling of constriction, " tightness" 
across the lower part of the chest, depression of spirits, and other 
lesser indications of derangement. The primary disturbance most 
usually becomes aggravated at night, and the patient retires to bed in 
the anticipation of coming evil. In some cases he does not awake im- 



144- PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

mediately on an invasion of the attack, but continues in a state of half- 
consciousness approaching to nightmare — sensible of the attack, and 
yet unable to resist it. He raises himself up or gets out of bed, pant- 
ing and gasping for breath, and wheezing so loud, that he may be 
heard at a considerable distance. If attended, he calls and makes 
signs to have the doors and windows opened, and frequently sits at 
the latter for hours together, regardless of bodily cold, so he can in- 
hale the cool air of night. Instances have been recorded of patients 
not merely remaining at the open window, but leaning over it, resting 
on the sill, with the arms hanging over the outside, for several nights 
together, even during the winter season ; and what renders the fact 
more extraordinary is, that the patient, though at other times very 
susceptible, rarely experiences any ill effects from this rash exposure, 
proving how extensively involved the whole nervous system must be 
during an Asthmatic paroxysm. The body is generally bedewed with 
perspiration, though the extremities are almost always clay cold. Dur- 
ing the fit, the countenance becomes anxious, pale, and haggard; it will 
sometimes last for several hours, and the only consolation the patient 
can derive in this extremity of suffering, is the knowledge of its limit 
in duration and the hope of its speedy cessation. An attack usually 
terminates by the inspirations becoming of easier performance, the 
cough less distressing, and a (sometimes) copious expectoration, at 
once the sign and means of his relief; and when it is over, sleep 
succeeds the exhaustion of suffering, and the patient, on awaking, not 
unfrequently experiences a perfect restoration. It sometimes happens 
that a recurrence takes place on the following night, but this is a rare 
occurrence. 

After a longer or shorter interval of time the paroxysm returns with 
all its former characteristics, and is again in turn succeeded by a pe- 
riod of cure. In this alternation of comparative health and suffering, 
many years, and even the greater part of a long life, are consumed, the 
paroxysm returning at intervals of every variety of extent, once in a 
week, a month, a year, and alternate or only every seventh year. The 
recurrences are seldom exhibited at any definite period ; yet instances 
have occurred wherein the disease has made its attacks with singular 
uniformity. They sometimes continue for many years successively, 
and then cease entirely ; but this is not usual. They are most frequent- 
ly renewed periodically, induced by particular circumstances, states of 
the weather, situation, or the other exciting causes before enumerated. 
Some persons are thus afflicted only in cold weather ; some in damp, 
foggy, or moist states of the atmosphere ; others, again, only experi- 
ence it in the summer season, their health being improved during cold 



ASTHMA. 145 

weather. Many asthmatics find a dry country air most beneficial ; 
while not a few, again, seek for the greatest ease in the crowded, 
smoky city. 

It is remarkable how the disease varies in its consequences in differ- 
ent individuals. I once knew two patients, uncle and nephew, who 
were affected with Asthma ; but the complaint in each was attended 
with different indications. The nephew was very fond of attending 
theaters, not from any particular delight in dramatic performances, 
but because the atmosphere of a full house invariably produced relief ; 
while to the uncle a casual visit was in the highest degree distressing — 
so much so, indeed, as to amount to an ultimate interdiction. The 
uncle was one of those who gasped for the freshest, coldest air ; while 
the nephew I have seen in the hottest afternoon in summer with his 
silk handkerchief applied to his mouth to modify the irritation caused 
by the air at even that high temperature. 

The curious reader will desire, no doubt, to know the cause of such 
wonderful phenomena. The immediate effect producing such distress- 
ing symptoms is a muscular contraction of the windpipe and bronchial 
tubes. There is scarcely any person but what knows something of 
what cramp means when it affects the muscles of the calf of the leg, 
causing the most intense pain for a little time. Such are the character- 
istic features of Asiatic Cholera, only the latter not only affects the 
muscles of the legs, but frequently the whole body. Now, reasoning 
from the same physiological phenomena, as it respects Spasmodic Asth- 
ma, we find that what produces the great difficulty of breathing is a 
muscular contraction, or closure of the air-passages. The muscles in 
the limbs ar long, and extend from one point of insertion in a bone to 
another ; whereas, in the windpipe and bronchial tubes they are com- 
pletely circular, having some three different layers. Now the same 
effect attends the muscles in the air-passages that attends the legs 
when you have cramps, and are awakened from intense sleep by it. The 
muscles in the windpipe and the bronchia being circular, so contract 
spasmodically as to close almost up, and exclude the air from entering 
the lungs ; hence the wonderful and frightful symptoms that attend 
Spasmodical or Nervous Asthma. 

The question follows, then, what is the cause for such a wonderful 
effect ? The cause arises in a debilitated condition of the whole nerv- 
ous system, but particularly that nerve known as the pneumo gastric 
nerve, having a branch going both to the lungs and the stomach. At 
the time this paroxysm or fit takes place, this nerve is in a state of 
great irritability or excitability ; but the remote cause may be very 
diversified. In many cases it is strictly hereditary, a family complaint, 
10 



146 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

like gout, dropsy, or scrofula, handed down from sire to son, from one 
generation to another — that is, a predisposition to be thus affected 
when the patient is exposed to immediate exciting or irritating causes, 
to develop this latent or predispositional, constitutional cause, the 
same as exists in other cases that take on Tubercular Consumption by 
parentage ; diseases in others of gout and rheumatism; in others, drop- 
sy ; in others, scrofula ; in others, cancer. But this disease is one that 
peculiarly affects the nervous system in its immediate effects. Derange- 
ment of the stomach, the liver, the glandular secretions, the whole 
digestive apparatus, and the bowels frequently, cause this nervous irri- 
tation to be extended to the windpipe and the bronchia ; in others, an 
enlarged or diseased liver alone. In many that we have witnessed, 
especially in the western country, where bilious and miasmatic affec- 
tions are the peculiar diseases of that climate, we have known a 
sluggish, torpid, or enlarged liver, and, at times, an enlarged, diseased 
spleen, to develop Spasmodic Asthma, and to be its entire cause; com- 
bined, no doubt, in its wonderful and mysterious effect by that subtle 
poison known as malaria or miasma. 

Now the pneumo-gastric nerve, in this case, becomes excited and 
diseased in two ways — namely, mechanically, by the local pressure and 
irritation of the liver or the spleen, and in another way by the pros- 
trating, devitalizing, or paralyzing effects of this miasmatic poison, 
which being inhaled into the lungs in the breath, and which contami- 
nates the whole circulation, and has its blunt of action mysteriously 
upon that branch of the pneumo-gastric system of nerves so as to 
produce Nervous or Spasmodic Asthma. 

We wish the reader to perceive and understand here the harmony 
that we are endeavoring to maintain in every disease that we shall 
treat upon in this book, with its relation to the theory laid down in 
the opening section on Pulmonary Consumption, or Tuberculosis, that 
it was a disease of the blood, and to understand that such is our opin- 
ion in reference to this mysterious phenomenon known as Spasmodic or 
Nervous Asthma; although you will understand the immediate or 
approximate cause, terminating in the spasmodic effect or phenomenon 
explained above, is upon the nervous system, and particularly upon 
one branch of nerves. Yet we maintain the principle which we have 
started upon — namely, that the cause for this phenomena lies in — 
what ? In the font of all physical life and health, the blood, which is 
the foundation of physical health. When the blood is kept in a pure, 
uncontaminated state, it is equal to its purposes and designs, as ex- 
plained repeatedly in this volume ; in what constitutes the primates 
and the functions of physical health, the nervous system itself and its 



ASTHMA. 147 

set of nerves manifesting this peculiar phenomena, would in itself then 
be healthy, and thereby this wonderful paroxysm of suffering, which so 
many are liable to, and from which so many suffer during long periods 
of their lives, untold horrors, would be avoided. Hence, it will be seen, 
following up this same philosophical mode of reasoning, that what may 
be the exciting cause to one may not be the exciting cause to another. 
In fact, they are very different ; so each individual case has to be care- 
fully and minutely investigated upon physiological and pathological 
principles by the skillful physician, in order to treat it successfully. In 
many cases the exciting cause may be errors in diet, late suppers, cer- 
tain articles of food that are very indigestible in themselves, or from 
a certain idiosyncrasy or peculiarity of constitution or temperament. 
Certain articles of food that are perfectly healthy to the majority of 
people, will excite Nervous or Spasmodic Asthma in some individuals. 
Articles of fish, shell-fish, lobsters, or oysters, will produce this in many, 
from these certain inscrutable peculiarities of constitution, that can only 
be known to the patient or observing physician by practical illustra- 
tions of this kind. Hence the author of this work has been three times 
of his life made seriously sick, and prostrated as it were, to the gates 
of the grave, by cholera morbus, vomiting, purging, and spasmodic af- 
fections of the lungs, by eating oysters, and that at a proper season, 
and very moderately, when they were agreeable to the taste and appe- 
tite. We have known, in one case, an oyster to lie perfectly indigest- 
ible in the stomach of a patient for three days, and then be ejected by 
vomiting. We have known the same effect from certain other articles 
of shell-fish, and likewise a great many other articles of diet which 
people consider healthy, but which, to certain individuals, are absolute 
poisons. But this needs explanation or qualification. We do not mean 
that the food would be poisonous if the whole digestive apparatus and 
the vital nerve-forces were equal to the performance of their functions. 
We maintain, from our own experience, that the reason why certain 
articles of food excited in us, and others whom we have been called 
upon to prescribe for, those most alarming and dangerous paroxysms 
of asthma or other diseases, was not owing in themselves to any de- 
leterious combinations, but to a certain negative or morbid condition 
of the stomach and digestive apparatus, which, as we have before 
said, forms the grand laboratory of the pabulum of life. 

Now, the reader, to profit by our great experience — and when we 
say great, we do not mean it egotistically — for we have had this 
same disease in our own person, in all its utmost horrors and bitter con- 
sequences, little thinking, when in our professional capacity we had 
visited others many years previously, and witnessed their untold suffer- 



148 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

ings, that we should ever be liable to, or suffer its effects ; but such 
was our case, even after we had passed the fortieth year of our life, 
little suspecting even that we inherited any predisposition to it — will 
look at what were both the predisposing and exciting causes in our own 
person, to enable him to better trace out those for himself. 

When we were first attacked with this mysterious phenomenon, we 
had just set out on a winter's lecturing tour in the Eastern and Middle 
States. We had just closed a course of lectures at Bristol, Rhode Is- 
land, and had gone to Providence, a field where we had labored ex- 
tensively, and prescribed very successfully for a large number of cases 
of Tubercular and Bronchial Consumption and throat diseases, and 
had there announced a second course of lectures. The hall was se- 
cured, the evenings were announced, our lectures and their subjects 
were all duly published. But some three or four days previous to 
their commencement we had begun to feel nearly all the symptoms 
that we have described under their appropriate head at the commence- 
ment of this section, and so great was the difficulty of breathing on the 
evening of the commencement of our introductory to the course, it 
was with the greatest exertion, after riding to the hall, that we could 
ascend the flight of stairs leading to the platform, without suffocation. 
After some very labored remarks, delivered with intense pain and suf- 
fering, we were obliged to abandon the course and our professional 
labors for the entire winter, and return home to New- York, the suffer- 
ing in our own case was so great. 

We had but a little time previous fitted out a very costly and com- 
plete apparatus, involving the expenditure of several hundred dollars, 
indulging the most sanguine hopes, not only of being of inestimable 
benefit to mankind by imparting to some the most instructive lessons 
upon physiology and the science of human health and life, but realizing 
at the same time a compensation and lucrative remuneration for our 
great expenditure and arduous investigations and efforts that we had 
embarked in this department. The reader may judge of our surprise 
on being thus afflicted with oiie of the most unsuspected maladies. 
We had suffered in our own person, as the reader has been led to an- 
ticipate by reading the introductory sections, all the various forms of 
those dreaded maladies of the chest — Tubercular Consumption, bleed- 
ing at the lungs, and dropsical effusions, which we had apparently en- 
tirely recovered from, and had been spending several weeks in the 
country, recruiting and invigorating our physical energies, preparing 
for the winter's campaign of lecturing on health and physiology ; hence 
we were taxed to the utmost of our ingenuity and great practical ex- 
perience to understand why we should be the victim now of such an 



ASTHMA. 149 

appalling and distressing malady. The causes, on mature reflection 
and deliberation, were apparent. What were they ? Our nervous sys- 
tem had been wrought up to an intensified state, as it were, by extreme 
mental labor and taxation, long anticipation of what should be our ac- 
complishment in this department — namely, in laboring in the behalf of 
suffering humanity, and to enlighten the community generally in re- 
gard to the physiological laws of life and health, and what were the 
causes of so much disease in the United States. In leaving home, we 
had exposed ourself injudiciously, considering our delicate constitu- 
tion, to storms and to fatiguing journeys in going to New-Hampshire 
after some excellent anatomical paintings that we had executed there 
by an experienced anatomical painter, and, returning, we had been ex- 
posed in the cold, and had taken a number of colds, one upon the 
other, so that we had silently developed a gradual and unsuspected 
pleurisy — that is, a moderate inflammation of the pleural membrane, 
lining the right cavity of the chest, and that silent or insidious inflam- 
mation, as it is properly termed, had developed unawares and unsus- 
pected to us an effusion of water in the cavity between the right lung 
and the pleural membrane, so that it extended to the seventh rib. The 
shortness of breath that we were laboring under had come on more or 
less gradually, occasioned by a neuralgic, spasmodic pain in the right 
chest and side, and especially were we attacked with neuralgic, spas- 
modic pain, when called upon to investigate a very minute and compli- 
cated case, and prescribe for the same. 

But now at this point the reader will perceive that these spasmodic 
effects, under all circumstances, may and do come on, as a general thing, 
very suddenly, and that their phenomena are produced by the closure 
of the bronchial tubes, as they are distributed throughout the lungs, 
and that these sudden phenomena may be induced by any extreme im- 
pression or taxation, fright, or great anxiety. Well, such was our 
case. Just setting out in our first campaign of lecturing, we were, of 
course, under intense solicitude and anxiety to acquit ourself with 
honor and credit, due to that investigation and time that we had spent 
in the preparation. 

But what else was the chain of causes for such a wonderful and 
unsuspected event, aside from this constitutional predisposition to 
take on diseases of the lungs and the chest, and a constitutional drop- 
sical disease also, as has been above explained ? We had formerly re- 
sided and practiced nine years in Illinois, in one of the worst malarious 
districts in the United States, where miasm, or the malarious ethereal 
poison, proves most subtle and deadly, in all the varied forms of bilious, 
intermittent, and remittent types, and their chain of morbid action, and 



150 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

development; in many instances, those fatal collapses are equal to Asia. 
tic cholera, even in their first attack at their onset, commencing where 
diseases of the New-England States only end — in death; so fatal, so 
insidious and inscrutable are the effects of this malarious or miasma- 
tic poison, which is imbibed by inhalation through the lungs, and so 
contaminates the blood and all the system. Here, then, had been the 
latent, and to us forgotten, starting-point for developing this new and 
unsuspected malady of the nervous system, Spasmodic Asthma, which 
so suddenly invaded us, and paralyzed those sanguine anticipations 
that we had indulged so long, of acquitting ourself as a public lecturer 
on the science of human life. 

Will the reader, then, hot perceive the harmony of all the philosophy 
maintained throughout every disease of the human system, barring, we 
mean, all accidental diseases — that every disease has its origin and 
source in the blood — in the font of human life — and that their outward, 
external manifestations are only unvarying indications to the intelligent 
discriminating observer of what is going on there ? The question may 
be asked : How were you affected by errors of diet or derangements as 
a consequence in the stomach and digestive apparatus, the laboratory 
of the pabulum of life ? We admit that we had suffered in our travels 
from home what many others suffer from voluntarily and willfully. We 
were obliged to submit to eating such food as we got, or else go with- 
out, that we knew was positively injurious ; or, at times, for the ac- 
complishment of our ends, be confined in rooms illy ventilated, and so 
situated that we contaminated our blood by the constant inhalation of 
mephitic air and gases, which we did for seven long weeks in Provi- 
dence, while boarding at one hotel, and this, we believe, in looking 
back over all this painful experience, gave rise to all this pain and suf- 
fering in our own person — suffering dearly bought, too, for it cost us 
many thousand dollars. But we look at this suffering and privation 
with a benevolent eye. As we have before noticed in regard to Tuber- 
cular Consumption, God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to 
perform, and now, as in the days of the Israelites, he has never left 
his cause without a witness, and if he has selected us, through a mys- 
terious providence, in the economy of his nature, to be the humble 
means to bless thousands of others, we will acquiesce with all due hu- 
mility of soul. 

Need we say further, then, to the reader, in illustration of what con- 
stitute the paroxysms or fits of Asthma, they occur, as a general thing, 
in persons of a very nervous temperament, whose nervous system is en- 
tirely unstrung by errors of living in various ways ; their whole nervous 
system is in a negative, depressed, or devitalized condition ; conse- 



ASTHMA. 151 

quently their digestive and assimilative functions are deranged, and it 
necessarily follows that their blood is in a morbid, unhealthy condition. 
This being the case, the pneumo-gastric nerves are in a more morbid and 
excitable condition than any others, and whatever may give rise to a 
local irritation ujdoii this one nerve distributed to the windpipe and the 
bronchial tubes, will produce this sudden spasmodic effect of closure 
in the same way that you are awakened from intense sleep at night by 
a sudden cramp of your leg. You have only to ask, in either case, 
what have been your errors of life and living or of diet to produce it ? 
All persons know, when they are awakened by intense cramps of the 
limbs, that they had been excessively fatigued the day previous, and a 
great deal on their feet, or had damp or cold feet, or both combined. 

Be it understood, then, to the reader or victim of Spasmodic, Ner- 
vous Asthma, that such is the immediate effect, and that the predispos- 
ing causes may be almost innumerable and various ; they must be traced 
out in each individual case at the time of their occurrence, whether 
errors of diet or of living in all the various ways named, or submit 
themselves to a judicious, discriminating physician — for instance, to the 
faculty of the Troy Lung and Hygienic Institute, to be carefully dis- 
criminated for the time being, as pertains to each individual case. 

IN REGARD TO THE TREATMENT. 

If the right treatment is at hand and adopted at once, this very pain- 
ful phenomenon can be relieved in a very few minutes, without much 
prolonged suffering, as we have ascertained in our own person, from 
experience, and after much painful suffering. The effect may be re- 
lieved almost instantaneously by inhaling in the breath either warm or 
cold (for the most part cold) anti-spasmodic anodyne or expectorant 
vapor, to relieve this immediate effect. After suffering several days 
and nights most painfully and intensely in our own person, we were 
led to reflect upon and study the phenomenon minutely in all its conse- 
quences and ramifications. The difficulty of breathing that we labored 
under was so excruciating and intense, that we have been nearly suffo- 
cated, and came nigh falling down on ascending, even gently, one 
flight of stairs. But as we have before said in respect to another dis- 
ease, it was this suffering which caused us to think and ask ourself 
the question : What is the condition of your lungs or respiratory organs, 
that you must so suffer for want of — what ? God's vital air. As soon 
as this question w r as solved, that the air-passages were closed up by 
spasmodic contraction, that instant the remedy was suggested to us as 
if by spiritual impression. What was that ? An anti-spasmodic. In five 
minutes we ordered an anti-spasmodic to be brought upon a towel, 



152 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

which we inhaled, under a physician whom we called merely to watch 
our pulse for fear we should take too much of it, and in fifteen minutes 
the spasm had subsided. To one suffering in all the intensity of spas- 
modic Asthma, and then so suddenly obtaining relief, as we had done, 
the feeling can be compared only to one other instance that we have 
witnessed in our extensive professional practice. What was that ? To 
a mother that has passed many long hours through all the intensified 
agonies, lingering, prolonged, renewed pains of labor, to give birth to 
her offspring ; she has been cheered by her physician many hours, 
days, and nights — four even, as we have witnessed — her strength kept 
supported until it is almost exhausted in the excruciating tortures, 
worse even than death itself: ah! bnt at that very time when fore- 
boding seems to have captivated all her attention, relief comes in giv- 
ing birth to the child. Such is the relief from this intensified nervous 
Asthma, after one has suffered so long. 

I recollect very well, when in my general practice in the city of 
Brooklyn, some years before I had been its victim myself, of attending 
one delicate lady, subject quite frequently to Spasmodic Asthma, espe- 
cially on being exposed to the atmosphere or climate of her native 
city, Hartford, Ct. When first called, I administered the ordinary 
anti-spasmodics by the stomach. She had had several attacks pre- 
viously, when residing in New-York City, and had been in such immi- 
nent peril therefrom at those times, that she had then and there the 
elite of the faculty. Among them were Drs. Cheeseman and Dela- 
field, and it was after many prolonged hours of suffering on her part 
that they relieved her. At the first time I saw her and administered 
those anti-spasmodics by the stomach, relief was obtained in one hour's 
time, and she complimented me on the great success of my prescrip- 
tion, and in so short a time, after her attacks had bid defiance to emi- 
nent men some year or two previous. Well, I saw no more of this 
lady after a day or two. After a year or two she had attempted to 
visit her native city, Hartford, Ct., in the spring of the year, when 
the air embodies that peculiar chill known to the sea-coast in the east- 
ern cities in the spring of the year, and which can only be likened to 
a three-cornered, three-edged dart, so horrible, that neither pen nor 
tongue can describe. I know it well, for I spent many years of my 
life on the sea-coast, at Boston, prosecuting my professional studies, 
and it had the same depressing, paralyzing effect upon me, that seemed 
even to render life itself undesirable. 

This lady, by the way, was obliged to return instantly to Brooklyn 
to escape these bad effects upon her, and she had no more than arrived 
before the paroxysm of asthma had become so intense that she could 



ASTHMA. 153 

not lie in bed ; her countenance was livid from the carbon in the blood ; 
her breathing was agonizing in the extreme ; her countenance was 
anxious, such as can not be described nor comprehended, only by a 
physician whose experience has been such as to witness death under 
all circumstances, and see it in its most horrible forms, especially that 
known as the Hippocratic countenance itself. Such was the case of this 
lady when I was called to her bedside. 

Feeling sanguine at the success which had followed my former pre- 
scriptions, I administered them, anticipating the same results in a little 
time ; but, judge of my surprise and disappointment when I adminis- 
tered dose after dose, and attended her the whole day, without any 
other than temporary relief, the paroxysms would again return. At 
night her sufferings were agonizing — beyond human power to describe. 
She could not lie one moment in a horizontal postion, and was fatigued 
and exhausted for want of rest. Her three children came around her to 
bid her good-night. She took leave of them, and said in their presence 
she wished to die, so great was her suffering. At this crisis of her 
case the thought occurred to me, now if anti-spasmodics, administered 
by the stomach, which heretofore have been so successful, have failed 
to relieve this intensified spasm, or contraction of the trachea and bron- 
chia, what must be done ? If a powerful anti-spasmodic could be in- 
haled in the shape of vapor, the chances for her relief are great, other- 
wise death must supervene. All this occurred to me as instantaneously 
as the lightning's flash. I suggested it to her husband. Her husband, 
like all timid persons, timid from ignorance, opposed my administer- 
ing it. Then I said I would take counsel to warrant me. Counsel was 
ordered before it would be allowed to be given, although perfectly safe 
in my opinion. The counsel called objected to it at my first proposi- 
tion, but after giving the history of the case, of her present state, 
attacks, and suffering, and that the remedies formerly used with such 
success had now entirely failed, they readily assented, and approved 
of my judgment, and sat by me while I administered it. Judge of the 
happy results ; in fifteen minutes from the timel administered the vapor, 
this lady, who had but a little time before taken leave of her children, 
expecting to die before morning, and in her agonies wished for death to 
relieve her, was perfectly relieved. In a few hours we left her, with 
the prescription that she should be well sustained by proper nutrition. 
In the morning I again visited her, and learned that she got a good 
night's rest, and found her sitting in a chair very comfortably. 

Kind reader, you will here perceive another instance of the wonder- 
ful improvement and discovery in the medical science, in adapting re- 
medies upon rational scientific principles, under a very judicious dis- 



15 i PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

elimination of circumstances and causes, designed to effect certain 
ends. 

There are instances of disease and morbid derangements, especially 
those that occur in the blood alone, and by derangement of the diges- 
tive organs and functions, where medicines may be given very judi- 
ciously, scientifically, and with the best results. But when those diseases 
affect — what ? the organs of respiration, the air-passages, and the lungs 
— what follows? The medicines and agents, to give relief of the mo- 
mentary action or phenomena, must be administered — how ? Naturally, 
according to the physiological law of those organs that are affected, by 
inhaling them in the shape of vapors, or in the atmosphere, just as you 
perceive that the blood in my case and the other cases referred to, had 
been contaminated, and the latent cause had lain there for years in 
its subtlety, and now only was awoke, and brought into action ulti- 
mately upon the pneumo-gastric nerve, the nerves of the air-passages, 
and the lungs, by the concomitant exciting causes that I have enume- 
rated, as it may be. The effect of the causes differ, I allow, in each 
case; but to administer remedies effectually to relieve this sudden 
phenomenon, they must be administered in the shape of vapors, just as 
you would administer remedies locally to relieve the cramp of the leg, 
to be effectual in either case. But I admit farther that there may be 
required, after the paroxysm is relieved, a discriminating, judiciously 
advised constitutional treatment to correct any derangement in the 
stomach, the digestive organs, the secretions of the liver, or the aliment- 
ary canal, their glands and its mucous membranes, and so in the blood, 
the font and source of physical life and health. 

Hay-Asthma. 

There is another kind of Asthma which is becoming very prevalent 
in the United States, and yet its character and origin are but little un- 
derstood. Rarely is the right cause suspected on the part of the 
patient himself, and much less so on the part of the practitioners of 
the Allopathic school. We allude now to that form of Asthma known 
as Hay-Asthma, or hay-fever. It comes on immediately after the cut- 
ting of hay in the summer, and those persons subject to be affected 
thereby, are situated near to meadows, or places where the hay is cut 
and dried. The cause for this affection seems to be either in the nox- 
ious miasm kept in contact with the grass before it was cut, or from 
the exhalation of the drying of the grass itself, which becomes the 
property of some grasses, and which, when exhaled into the atmos- 
phere, becomes very obnoxious to those who are susceptible to Catarrh 
or Asthma. Hence, this form of Asthma, or hay-fever, combines the 



ASTHMA. 155 

two — the nervous or spasmodic of the first, with the acute, catarrhal 
inflammation of the latter ; which catarrhal inflammation is produced 
by the obnoxious particles of the hay. Public attention has been 
called but very little to notice, or know any thing about the cause and 
general prevalence of this form of catarrhal Hay-Asthma, or hay-fever, 
and probably would have known much less, had it not been the case 
that it was said that Daniel Webster himself was subject to it ; having 
first been seized with these attacks while in England, where this dis- 
ease has been made the subject of many learned treatises and investi- 
gations. 

We ourself have seen many cases, our advantages having been such. 
Making diseases of the throat and lungs a specialty for so many 
years, has brought us the opportunity of investigating this new malady 
iu many very interesting cases. 

The first and most prominent case that we saw, was that of a lady 
of about fifty-five years of age, who consulted us, some seven years 
since, from Bristol, Ct. She had been subject to annual, periodical 
attacks of Asthma every summer for about twenty years, coming on 
immediately after the hay had begun to be mowed and made. These 
attacks were always preceded by every symptom of acute cold, or 
catarrh, in the nostrils and frontal sinus, with a profuse discharge of an 
acrid nature, which rapidly followed down the mucous membrane of the 
throat into the larynx, windpipe, and bronchia. She would have no 
knowledge of having taken a cold at any time previous to its onset ; 
hence, these attacks had always been a matter of mystery to her. 
Their cause, origin, and true nature never had been once hinted by 
the many physicians she had consulted. This goes to show the 
truth — and it should be to the old Allopathic school of practitioners 
a humiliating reflection, too — how little they keep themselves posted up 
in regard to the true nature and cause of the hundreds and thousands 
of new forms of disease, which are becoming annually, if not daily 
manifested. 

Her treatment, from their prescriptions, had been equally as un- 
successful, as they had been predicated without any scientific discrim- 
ination or knowledge of her case After a few questions, to ascertain 
her proximity to meadows and new-made hay, we satisfied ourself 
of its character, and told her that it was Hay- Asthma, a name she had 
never heard mentioned. After hearing our explanation, and reading 
some authority from Watson and others of London, it looked perfectly 
rational to her, and she and her husband both were perfectly satisfied 
at our diagnosis. We then made a prescription to relieve her of the 
present attacks, which she had been laboring under for three weeks. 



156 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

We gave her our asthmatic inhaling vapor, which at once relieved all 
the difficulty of breathing, and in a few days most of the irritation 
in the air-passages and lungs had subsided. This, combined with our 
inestimable Catarrh Remedy, soon arrested its progress; we also gave 
ample directions, and many warnings how to avoid subsequent attacks 
in the future, by anticipating the hay-season a few weeks, and going to 
some place by the sea-shore, a short distance from meadows, that she 
would escape it. 

We have learned since, that our prescriptions were in every way 
successful, and perfectly satisfactory. We succeeded, therefore, in 
curing this chronic irritation and irritability of the bronchial mucous 
membranes, which had existed some twenty years, and by the patient's 
subsequent precaution, she has escaped an attack ever since. 

Since then we have met with several cases of this form of Asthma 
in children ; but it was rather more of a catarrhal difficulty of breath- 
ing, affecting the nostrils, and producing much exhalation of mucous 
from the bronchial membranes, without the serious asthmatic breath- 
ing that characterized patients of more advanced life. In each case 
our treatment has been perfectly successful. 

We were consulted, but a year ago, by a lady from California, sub- 
ject to the same periodical, catarrhal, asthmatic paroxysm, occasioned 
by the effects of new-mown hay. She was a native of Clinton Co., 
N". Y. ; had resided some years in California ; but so long and so fre- 
quently had these paroxysms been renewed, that it had terminated in 
a Chronic Catarrh or Bronchitis. She was anxious to put herself un- 
der our improved system of treatment by inhalation, for the cure of 
her Bronchitis, which had resulted from the cause above named ; say- 
ing that she must leave the North in a few weeks, and return to Cali- 
fornia, fearing a renewed attack should she stay through the hay- 
season. We have frequently heard from this patient since her return 
to California, congratulating herself upon her recovery from this long- 
continued irritation and catarrh, which had followed the cause men- 
tioned, and occurred some eight or ten years previous. 

Trusting it will be more satisfactory to many of our interested and 
inquiring readers, to know something further respecting the opinion 
of foreign authors on this new form of Asthma, therefore, we will make 
some quotations from the practice of the celebrated Dr. Watson of 
London : 

"Dr. Bostock, in the Medico- Chirurgical Transactions, gives an account of 
this complaint as it is apt to attack himself. It is called the Catarrhus astivus, 
and by some the liay-fever, or the Hay -Asthma. In Dr. Elliotson's lectures, 
also, as published in the Medical Gazette, there is a good deal of curious inform- 



ASTHMA. 157 

ation on this malady, contained in letters addressed to him from practitioners in 
various parts of the country, in consequence of some previous remarks he had 
made upon it in a clinical lecture, which had also been printed. Dr. Elliotson 
speaks of it as a combination of Catarrh and Asthma. It consists in excessive 
irritation of the eyes, nose, and the whole of the air-passages ; producing, in 
succession, itching of the eyes and nose, much sneezing occurring in paroxysms, 
with a copious defluxion from the nostrils, pricking sensations in the throat, 
cough, tightness of the chest, and difficulty of breathing, with or without con- 
siderable mucous expectoration. This complaint affects certain persons only, 
and in them it always takes place at certain periods of the year, in the latter 
end of May, or in June, when the grass comes into blossom, or when the hay- 
making is going on. It seems, in fact, to be produced by some kind of emana- 
tion from certain of the grasses that are in flower at that season, of the irritat- 
ing qualities of which emanation some persons only — and a very few persons in 
comparison with the entire population — are susceptible. The disorder happens 
only at that one particular season ; and it then attacks persons who are not 
remarkably subject to Catarrh at other times, nor from the ordinary causes of 
Catarrh ; and if they avoid meadows and hay-fields, and the neighborhood of 
hay-stacks, they escape the malady. Hence, going to the sea-coast, and espe- 
cially to those parts of the coast that are barren of grass, offers a means of 
protection ; and when this can not be done, such persons obtain refuge, in some 
measure, from the cause of the irritation, by remaining within doors, and shut- 
ting out as much as possible the external air during the hay-crop. 

" One lady, who suffered annually from this strange affection, states, that a 
paroxysm was brought on by the approach of her children, who had been in a 
hay-field ; and once this happened when the hay-season had been for some time 
over, upon their joining her at tea, after playing in a barn in which the hay of 
that year had been deposited. She was in the habit of flying to Harwich, or 
some other part of the coast, as the dangerous season came on. On one occa- 
sion, while walking on the shore at Harwich, she was suddenly attacked by the 
complaint, to her great surprise, as she was not aware of any grass being in the 
neighborhood ; but the next day she discovered that hay-making was in progress 
upon the top of the cliff at the time she was walking under it. In another 
year, she being at Cromer, and an attack that she had suffered having quite sub- 
sided, and all the hay-making thereabouts being over, she was suddenly visited 
by the well-known symptoms, and on going into her bed-chamber, perceived 
that they were building a large stack of hay in a yard near the house, having 
transferred it from a field five miles distant. 

"Very lately I was asked by Mr. Cheyne to see with him the wife of a stable- 
keeper near Regent street. I found her suffering under what is popularly 
called a ' crying cold ' — pain in the situation of the frontal sinuses, streaming 
eyes, sneezing and defluxion from the nostrils, and very urgent dyspnoea, or 
difficulty of breathing, which was accompanied by loud wheezing. Symptoms 
of this kind had come on suddenly some days before, and her distress was then 
so great, that her husband proposed to drive her in a gig to consult a medical 
friend of his who resided at Islington. On their way thither every symptom 



153 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

disappeared, and she felt at once quite well. She subsequently staid a night 
or two, in comfort, with some relations in the city. Immediately upon her 
return home the same symptoms recurred, with all their former severity, and 
resisted the means adopted for their relief by Mr. Cheyne, who had now been 
called in. He was soon led to suspect the cause of the attack, and of its ob- 
stinacy. There was a strong odor of hay in the house. The husband told him 
that his lofts were filled with a lot of hay which had recently arrived and which 
had an unusually powerful smell. We learned that our patient was always 
worse at night, when the house was shut up, and better in the morning, when a 
free current of air blew through the open windows. We advised a temporary 
change of residence ; but our advice was not followed until two days afterward, 
the disorder meanwhile continuing, and increasing in intensity. Then the 
patient removed to lodgings not one hundred yards distant, and immediately all 
the catarrh and distress again ceased, and she passed a perfectly tranquil night. 
Afterward she went into the country, and did not return until the odoriferous 
parcel of hay had been consumed, and a new stock laid in. She was, however, 
revisited by some slight cough, and occasional dyspnoea, neither of which trou- 
bled her much or long. 

" Avoidance, then, of the ascertained source of the complaint, is the best 
thing that can be recommended to these persons. You may read almost every 
year, that one of our English dukes has gone to Brighton to escape the hay- 
fever. But it is not in the power of every one to leave home for that purpose ; 
and it has been found that the system is capable of being fortified, in some 
degree, against the pernicious effects of these vegetable effluvia. Mr. Gordon, 
of Welton, in Yorkshire, had communicated some interesting observations to the 
profession on this subject, before those of Dr. Elliotson were published. You 
may find Mr. Gordon's paper in the fourth volume of the Medical Gazette. He 
supposes that the aroma of the sweet-scented vernal grass, the anthoxanthum 
odoratum, is the principal exciting cause of the complaint. He found the 
symptoms more speedily and effectually removed by the tincture of lobelia 
inflatu than by any thing else that he had tried at that time ; and he recom- 
mended the cold shower-bath as the best preservative against the attack. But 
in a subsequent communication to Dr. Elliotson, he states that the sulphate of 
quinia, and of iron, given in combination, had proved completely successful in 
emancipating from their tormenting disorder the two patients, from whose cases 
he had principally drawn up his account ; although they had, in spite of all 
previous treatment, suffered an annual return of it for fifteen or twenty years. 
The susceptibility of this troublesome affection of the mucous membrane, from 
a peculiar cause, which, to most people, occasions no uneasiness, appears some- 
times to run in families ; and this is nothing more than one might expect." 

Note. — For this form of Asthma, we can send our treatment to any distance and any 
part of the country, and treat the patient with the same successful results as though 
he were personally with us at the Institution. 



TUBERCULAR DISEASE OP THE KIDNEYS. 159 



JP fetontfc jRmMw. 



Tubercular Disease of the Kidneys — Bright's and Addison's Diseases of the 
Kidneys — Atrophy, or Morbid Wasting of the Kidneys, and other Diseases of 
the Kidneys — as Gravel and Stone or Urinary Calculi 

The unprofessional reader may start, perhaps, in surprise at the an- 
nouncement of such a disease affecting the Kidneys as Tubercular Con- 
sumption ; but he has only to bear in mind the harmony of the great 
philosophy that we started with in the opening sections on Tubercular 
Consumption, to find that what constitutes Tubercular Consumption 
is a certain morbific condition of the blood, and that its manifestation, 
in the formation of little, livid, hard, granular bodies in the lungs, 
is but one indication of a great constitutional cause, which may be 
developed at the Kidneys ; or, in fact, at all other organs of the body, 
as we have named and illustrated. It is only because science has made 
such rapid strides, and by unwearied devotion in its application to 
fathom the causes of disease by microscopic anatomists, and those 
who have become well posted in analysis, that now enables us to de- 
tect its being an every-day affection of the Kidneys. 

There is no doubt but that this tubercular affection of the Kidneys 
has been a very general cause of death for long years ; but owing to 
the deficiency of not being well versed in the means by which it could 
be detected — namely, by the microscope and by analysis of the urine 
and the blood — it was very much overlooked. 

Great discoveries are made in medicine on the same principle and in 
the same manner that great discoveries are made in astronomy and 
the collateral sciences — by the unwearied industry and indomitable 
ambition of individual men who feel an unconquerable thirst, as it were, 
to develop the great hidden principles which lie back in nature. So, it 
belonged to Dr. Bright to first discover the great prevalence of this 
peculiar tubercular degeneration of the Kidneys, and proclaim it to the 
world ; hence it is known in medical language as " Bright's Disease of 
the Kidneys." 

The stimulus given to such men undoubtedly has been found in the 
varied mysterious features that many diseases assume in modern times, 



160 



PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 



which we daily see, and which is the result of deviating from the more 
natural modes of life and adopting new, artificial, refined, and luxu- 
rious modes of living. Hence, owing to the innumerable features which 
disease has been almost daily assuming within a few years, scientific 
men in Europe have devoted themselves, with a most laudable zeal and 
unremitting assiduity, to the study of animal chemistry, the analysis of 
the blood, the urinary secretions therefrom, and in fact all the secre- 
tions of the body, to discover the true methods of accounting for the 
causes of diseases, based upon scientific principles alone, which can not 
fail ; and the discovery has been made that the Kidneys are liable to 
become affected and diseased by constitutional blood-contamination, 
and are found to be of daily occurrence. 





This cut represents a section 
of a Kidney in a healthy 
condition. 

This cut represents a section of a Kidney af- 
fected with Bright's disease or Tubercular 
degeneration. Patches of ulceration will be 
noticed pervading the whole section. 

This important light has been gained likewise by studying the anat- 
omy of the structure of the Kidneys under the microscope. As we 
have before suggested in a preceding section, the application of the 
microscope to organic chemistry has thrown entire new light — not 
only as to the cause of Tubercular Consumption of the lungs, but dis- 
eases of every nature ; for the very reason that the large number of 
diseases to which the human system is liable, have their origin in the 
blood, (those diseases of a mechanical or accidental nature are, of course, 
excepted ;) hence, all the old theories which have encumbered the 
world so long with numberless volumes, and masses of books which have 
served, and we regret to say, serve at the present day, to mislead thou- 



TUBERCULAR DISEASE OF THE KIDNEYS. 161 

sands of minds, are becoming useless and worse than useless, so far as 
their doctrine of cause or curability is concerned. 

This proves the absurdity and the inconsistency of the Allopathic 
school of medicine and practice to a great extent ; for instance, the 
microscope will readily discover any deviation in the blood-corpuscles, 
any deviation from their natural healthy structure and form, which is 
known to be round or globular. If the blood becomes poor — in other 
words, scrofulous — the blood-corpuscles become elongated and changed 
from their healthy form. We only mention this to illustrate to the 
common reader the great power of the microscope to detect the cause 
of disease back in the blood, when, if the physician or the prescriber is 
only governed by the ordinary external symptoms and manifestations, 
and prescribes for them alone, without knowing, upon the principle of 
chemical analysis and microscopic examination, what is going on in the 
blood, his prescriptions are all empirical, and are as liable to do mis- 
chief as to do good, and still more so ; for it is a matter of guess-work, 
and the patient might as well prescribe for himself — and better too, 
than to employ that class of physicians. 

Following up this same study of urinary pathology and the know- 
ledge of the structure of the Kidneys, other new diseases are daily being 
discovered ; hence, comes the new disease known as "Addison's Dis- 
ease," which has been explained and published to the medical world by 
Dr. Addison, of England. 

Actuated by the same spirit that has guided and stimulated these 
and other physicians in Europe, we have devoted many years to the 
study of urinary pathology with the microscope, to trace the condition 
of the blood in Tubercular Consumption, and all other forms of organic 
diseases which we have so extensively treated in our institutional prac- 
tice. In this manner we have become possessed of the fact that 
diseases of the Kidneys, in the United States particularly, occurred in 
those sections of the country where is found water strongly impreg- 
nated with lime, and where people make use of much hard or lime- 
water. 

Kind reader, pardon us for repeating once more that we are writing 
this book expressly for your good, and the good of those who have 
hitherto had a very limited and altogether erroneous idea of what 
constitutes human health. We write it for this purpose — namely, that 
every person should understand himself so far as the laws of health 
are concerned, and that to know himself is to know how to live, and 
how to possess that choicest of blessings— health. It is an old maxim, 
but a true one, given to us by the ancient philosopher, that " a sound 
mind can only dwell in a sound body" — Mens sana in corpore sano. 
11 



162 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

Dead language, however, is foreign to our purpose, but the language 
of the old Latins was so expressive — much more so than our modern 
English — we can hardly refrain from making a quotation so short, and 
yet embodying so much. Stop with me one moment, reader ; pause 
here and reflect upon how much is embodied in the short quotation we 
h-ave made from the Roman philosopher — "A sound mind can only 
exist in a sound body." 

Who is there, when they find their health shipwrecked, their 
strength exhausted, their energies gone, their hopes blighted, their 
spirits depressed — filled with pains and aches, so that every movement 
of the body is attended with fatigue and languor — would not then give 
all they possessed of this world's goods to be restored again to the 
enjoyment of health? They then realize, perhaps for the first time, 
that human health is not so readily found in pills and potions, and in 
taking medicines, as they formerly anticipated might be the case, when 
they now discover they have been so reckless of its resources. This 
same reflection applies equally to the rich and the poor, to the beg- 
gar and the millionaire, to the subject and the potentate ; for God, 
in his infinite providence, has wisely ordered that a blessing so inestim- 
able and precious as human health could not be bought by that which 
man alone has conveotionally set such high value upon — namely, gold, 
or the riches of the earth ; these alike fall into insignificance in the 
economy of His chancery, and but become baubles indeed ; for we have 
found, from our great experience — experience that has brought to us 
gray hairs, from the conflicts of much pain, and from the observation 
of many a spectacle appealing to us from many a sick-bed, and the 
death-bed scenes of many rich patients — that it is a humiliating thing 
in the extreme to find that those who possessed so much wealth, and 
have arrogated so much power while in comparative health, that they, 
when leveled by the shafts of disease, are placed on the same footing 
with the beggar. 

Pardon us when we again tell you that health never can be pur- 
chased by medicine. So long as you depend, reader, upon holding 
yourself in culpable ignorance as to a knowledge of your own. self, 
your own organization, or what constitutes human health, just so long 
will your most ardent anticipations be blighted — blighted when sick- 
ness, pain, and suffering come, and when you find that you can not get 
relief, and that health is not to be purchased at the apothecary's, nor 
by the prescriptions of the old-fogy physician, nor by taking so many 
ounces of medicine, or so many pills, as has been taught the commun- 
ity so erroneously, so absurdly, for so many centuries past. Hence, it 
becomes my duty to tell you again, that amid the conflicts and evolu- 



TUBERCULAR DISEASE OF THE KIDNEYS. 163 

lions of revolving centuries and still more revolving generations, 
that God never has left his cause without a witness. In the economy 
of health, as in the economy of his divine law, he never has left it 
without providing a requisite agent to bear down that principle to 
suffering generations, and open the eyes of those who have kept 
themselves or been kept in superlative ignorance, as it were, in regard 
to that priceless gem — human health. 

The value of health is only taught by pain and exquisite sufferings. 
All blessings that we enjoy are purchased at an extravagant price : 
" Knowledge the most precious comes from circumstances the most 
appalling." 

You will ask, then, when suffering with organic disease of the kid- 
neys, and the indescribable tortures and horrors it produces — the 
anguish, forebodings of mind, depression of your vital energies, and 
despondency of spirits, caused by the anticipation of much suffering 
in the future — and you will wonder, what constitutes the sweets of 
human health and life that were delegated to you by God, in the prov- 
idence of his economy. Ah! you will find, I fear, when it is too late, 
that health is not to be purchased by that blind recipe — by hailing your 
country physician as he rides by on his plump, well-fed pony, sitting 
on his saddle-bags — that it is not by steeping so many herbs. Ah ! 
kind reader, God has fixed health at too priceless a rate to be had in 
this trifling manner. 

You will ask, probably, what constitutes human health and its 
sweets. I shall take occasion to answer that question again here, for 
it will bear repetition, that human health is the result of — what? Hu- 
man health, kind reader, consists in the harmonious action of every 
function of every organ of this human organism of yours and mine, 
and every person's. 

Have you ever considered, then, what a wonderful function your 
Kidneys perform ? 

We shall have to again stop here, and ask you, in our own vernacu- 
lar, to pause for a few moments, perhaps, before you can answer this 
question, or rather I shall have answered it for you ; for I presume 
you now to be ignorant of the structure of the anatomy of the kidneys, 
much more their function. I have merely asked you, in the question, 
if you were aware of the important function that your kidneys per- 
form during three-score years and ten, perchance should you live to 
that time that God delegated you to live at least, and your humble 
servant himself, by the way, intends to live longer than that, to ex- 
pound those precious lessons to suffering humanity. 



164 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

The kidneys are two organs, situated each side of the spine, located 
in the loins, their upper part lying immediately under the short-ribs. 

Well, we have asked you the question, if you were aware what 
an important function your kidneys performed during life. The best 
way for you to answer this question satisfactorily to yourself would be 
thus — namely, to commence on a Sunday morning, for instance, and 
save through each succeeding day of the week, for one whole week, 
or perchance for one whole month, all the urine secreted by your kid- 
neys — from where ? Yes, kind reader, did you ever think and ponder 
well where this urine comes from ? It comes from the blood, and 
every drop of urine that you make during your whole life is secreted 
out of that great pabulum that we have been heretofore speaking of — 
namely, the blood, the font of all human health, and the phenomena 
that constitute health, while in the physical organism. Well, if you 
save it. for one week or month, and measure it into ounces, you will 
find that, on the average, each day, the kidneys secrete to the amount 
of thirty-five ounces. Will you be good enough, then, to multiply 
this thirty-five ounces by seven, and then seven by thirty, and thirty 
by three hundred and sixty-five, three hundred and sixty five by three- 
score years and ten, (seventy,) which you ought to live, in order to 
fulfill the intention and design of Almighty God in the structure of 
your physical organism — your human existence ? A few minutes with 
the pencil, and the requisite faculties of computation, number and 
figure, will determine all this. You will say the quantity is enormous. 
I grant this — it is so. You will hit upon the important fact — the 
spectacle that stands out in bold relief, and its aggregate and enor- 
mity you can not deny ; for when you save it, and witness its bulk, 
you will be surprised at the wonderful magnitude of the function of 
the kidneys. 

Now, let me ask you — as I have sought to define to your compre- 
hension and to your perception, in giving some definite explanations 
of the organization and structure of the lungs, in their innumerable 
air-cells and the extent of their surface, and showing you thereby the 
wonderful function that the lungs perform — can you not perceive, by 
the same comparative mode of reasoning, and the same intelligence 
observe that your kidneys have to perform a wonderful function — 
when you see the naked fact — that your kidneys have to secrete so 
many hogsheads — of what ? — of poisons from the blood, during your 
physical life ? Do you wonder, then, that if they are not under the 
control of some amount of reason, and regulated by some law, and 
governed by some judicious wisdom on your part, that they, in turn, 



TUBERCULAR DISEASE OF THE KIDNEYS 165 

like the lungs, the stomach, and other organs of the body, must be 
constantly liable to become irritated, deranged, or diseased ? 

It is not possible for you, without applying yourself to the study of 
anatomy, under the light and illustration of the powerful microscope, 
that we have referred to, to comprehend the wonderful structure of 
the kidneys, and in the structure they become — what ? They become 
strainers — strainers of what ? Of all the poisons that are introduced 
into the blood, not only by the necessary decomposition of the body, 
from its necessary wear and tear — the conflicts of each hour and each 
day's labor and decay, but the poisons also that you, in your reckless- 
ness or ignorance, are continually introducing into the blood, indepen- 
dent of this necessary wear and tear of the physical organization, by 
the imprudencies of diet, of eating, of heaping into your stomach 
innumerable deadly poisons that never were calculated to be among 
the sixty-four primates of the blood — the material elements necessary 
to sustain this structure, this physical organism, and maintain it in the 
equilibrium of health. But you have introduced them, and do daily, 
into your blood — for what ? To pander to the morbid sense of taste 
of the palate, the artificial excitement of those nerves of taste which lie 
distributed on the tongue over the palate and in the mouth — to pander to 
the morbid appetite; and you introduce these poisons cooked up in such 
an inexplicable manner, that it would puzzle a scientific chemist to an- 
alyze and determine what were the component principles of that which 
was cooked in the kitchen, by an ignorant cook, (into whose keeping 
you have trusted this organism that you have inherited from Almighty 
God,) for the very purpose of pleasing your appetite on food formed 
from various poisons ; as hog's fat, (scrofula,) or the collection of vari- 
ous fats that you use for shortening, soap-grease, spices, and condi- 
ments too numerous to mention, which have been vamped up to suit 
the caprices and false notions of taste, to pander to your exquisite 
and delectable appetite and morbid sense of pleasure. Hence, kind 
reader, you are daily introducing into your blood, which should be the 
pabulum of life, the very poisons which take your health away, and 
which, though pleasing to the taste, become the hidden messengers of 
your death, and not only death, but an exquisite sense of suffering, of 
premature decay, fever, night-sweats, hectic flush, colliquative, dissolv- 
ing sweats ; of cold, depressing chills, horrid tortures, pains in the 
loins, pains in the kidneys, Gout, Rheumatism, Consumption — where 
did they lie when you introduced them into your blood — the font of 
human health, it should have been, but you perverted, by the way, the 
designs of Omnipotence ? They lay, reader, in ambush, in that delec- 
table dish that you were so hugely enjoying with your friend, with a 



166 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

bottle of Champagne, in the late oyster-supper, in the mince-pie, in the 
fried cakes, in the doughnuts — ah ! all these have been introduced, and 
now you see the enormity of the function that you have forced upon 
the kidneys — to what ? To do that which did not belong to their 
legitimate organic function to do, and which their natural structure, 
designed in the economy of God, was incapacitated to do. 

Hence, reader, you have perverted that function, you have disor- 
ganized that structure, and caused these innumerable diseases which 
scholarship Avould give you to understand is Bright's or Addison's 
disease, diabetes, atrophy, or wasting of the kidneys, as swelled ankles, 
tumid eyelids, and far worse, water in the ventricles of the brain — the 
citadel of the soul itself — because you have deranged the organism, 
and perverted their functions — namely, because the kidneys have not 
secreted it out of the blood. Hence, you see, in this eccentric way, 
if you allow me to express it, are you put in possession of the import- 
ant functions of the kidneys, which you and every individual possesses, 
and which, when in a healthy state, perform such a wonderful function 
of sustaining your body — the physical structure — in harmony, and 
maintaining it in health. 

Xow, you will ask, what constitutes tubercular degeneration of the 
kidneys ? I answer that it is a morbific condition of the blood, which 
we before explained, the same condition that gives rise to a tubercular 
deposit in the lungs, but in its effect upon the kidneys it is modified in 
its action of development, if I may so express it in my language, by the 
forced function that the kidneys are made to perform, by your artifi- 
cial habits of living, and the introduction into the blood, daily, of those 
poisons that I have before referred to ; hence the blood is perverted 
in its healthy momentum, not consisting of the sixty-four primates 
which should constitute its healthy condition and sustain the organic 
integrity of the kidneys and of all the organs of the body, but imbib- 
ing, instead, a scrofulous or strumous diathesis and diseased, morbific 
condition in an almost inscrutable manner — a manner which taxes 
a scientific chemist to define. Then, as your kidneys are eliminating 
functions or secreting organs only, to strain off from the blood those 
morbid poisons which you have made it to possess by your reckless- 
ness of living — namely, lime, oxalate of lime, lithic and uric acid, 
and the thousand other, as it were, nameless poisons, which you have 
introduced — they have become first irritated, then inflamed, then de- 
stroyed or disorganized in their organic structure, in which structure 
God formed them, so that they are incapacitated for a healthy function ; 
hence comes about not only one disease of tubercular, or fatty degen- 
eration as it may be, disease of the kidneys, but innumerable diseases 



TUBERCULAR DISEASE OF THE KIDNEYS. 167 

of the kidneys, as I have before mentioned, are being developed and 
taking place every day to an alarming extent. 

But perhaps you will ask why you have not known something of 
this before — why should all these diseases rise up at once so new, and 
prevail to such an alarming extent and fatality, just as diphtheria is pre- 
vailing, as we illustrated in the appropriate section ? I answer your 
question by saying that they have not risen up suddenly or at once — 
they have always prevailed, more or less, just in proportion to the de- 
viation of mankind from the natural laws of hygiene or health, and the 
perversion of the natural functions of the body by the cultivation of 
artificial and refined modes of life. The only reason that you are put 
in possession of them now, and they appear to you new — too glaring 
for your comprehension — is owing to your ignorance and the ignorance 
of the old-fogy physicians generally, who have ever put implicit con- 
fidence in their blind prescriptions and their old-fogy poisons, drugs, 
and medicines, instead of understanding yourself, and being the arbiter 
of your own health, which God, in his omnipotent wisdom, has called 
upon you to understand ; for I maintain this important principle and 
fact, that God never has given an organism and principle of being, of 
of life, of health, of happiness to any person, without, at the same time, 
delegating to that person the means of understanding how and why, 
if he would do so. 

But here, kind reader, lies the stress, and lies all the trouble. It 
is such indulgence, it is your willful, culpable neglect of not under- 
standing yourself. This brings me to that maxim of another of the 
old Roman philosophers, who lived centuries in advance of the Christ- 
ian era, when he proclaimed the important maxim, and it was written 
even over the doors of the temples of those times : "Nosce te ipsum." 
Ah ! you will ask, what is the meaning of this ? I admit that it is 
written in a dead or foreign language, but conveys none the less the 
living, sublime, and undying truth in the principle which has come 
down to you in your own vernacular — in that little, commonplace, 
cheap treatise which can be bought for twelve and a half cents by 
every person, and which you can read in an hour's time — by Pope, in 
these words : 

" Know thou thyself, presume not God to scan, 
The proper study of mankind is man." 

But you will say that the science of your own organism, structure, 
or economy is too learned and scientific for you to understand. I 
absolutely deny this assertion, and say that every person that moves 
about in the world and has life, has ample time, delegated by the 



168 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

game Almighty power that created them, to study themselves if they 
would. Every body should know, and does know, with one mo- 
ment's reflection, that they have a brain — and for what ? It is the 
organ of the mind. That they have a heart — and for what ? To cir- 
culate the blood. That they have lungs — and for what ? To oxy- 
genate the blood, and to breathe God's vital atmosphere. That they 
have a stomach — and for what ? To receive nutrition, pure, healthy 
food — and for what ? To make blood, the pabulum of human life and 
health, and to sustain their physical organism. That they have a liver 
— and for what ? See its proper functions under its appropriate head. 
That they have bowels — and for what ? You will see what I mean by 
the function of the bowels, under its appropriate heading — namely, to 
secrete and carry off by their appropriate glands, and not by the kid- 
neys, those deadly, nauseous, disorganizing poisons that are only in- 
tended to be secreted by them — the bowels, and to be eliminated and 
disgorged daily by their appropriate function. I appeal to you, proud 
man and woman, how do you abuse and pervert the appropriate func- 
tion of the bowels *? By filling your stomach, and consequently the 
blood, with poisons — and for what ? To please the panderings of your 
morbid appetite, the sense of taste and pleasure, which you have gen- 
erated by artificial habits and enervation. Is it for this that you live — 
is it for this Almighty God, in his infinite wisdom, organized you ? I 
answer again, that every nerve, whether nerve of sensation or nerve of 
volition, or any other, is made for a definite, specific, and all-wise pur- 
pose — of subserving what ? Of fulfilling and maintaining a purpose by 
accomplishing that end in the great economy of human fife. Ah ! will 
you lose sight of this great economy? What is the great economy ? 
Is it man's gold, glittering gold, and wealth ? A conservative, arbitrary 
principle of man, by which he may seek to further pander to those ar- 
tificial appetites and passions of his nature in a gaudy decoration and 
display — for what ? To excel his brother man — in her, to excel her 
sister woman in some butterfly decoration that brings but a sensitive, 
short-lived pleasure, that he or she is better than their fellow-immortals 
— yes, immortal, though pent up in a mortal body, just in proportion as 
you may put on a gaudy, showy appearance, in proportion to the satia- 
tion of a perverted sense of taste, as each one may arrogate to himself, 
according to his or her cultivated, perverted, or conservative notions, 
and as those notions conform to the caprice of fashion, which changes — 
how often ? Not only four times a year, but every month, week, and 
day, just in proportion to the caprice of a person's will, and that will 
changes just in proportion as it is not governed — by what ? The god- 
like, sustaining principles of nature which were made by Him, and de- 



TUBERCULAR DISEASE OF THE KIDNEYS. 169 

signed by him to control and sustain us under the umpire of wisdom, 
and intelligence, its handmaid, that we should day by day develop and 
become more beautiful in perfection, in order to fit us for that angelic 
and seraphic life beyond the short aspirations of man, beyond the 
confines of the tomb, that he so prematurely brings upon him by the 
perversion of these tastes, and pandering to the passions. 

But, you will ask, what are the causes for tubercular disease of the 
kidneys, for Addison's disease of the kidneys, Diabetes, that other 
astounding disease, almost even to modern science, and, I may truly 
and justly say, a thousand other modern diseases of the kidneys 
which are becoming developed every day, just in proportion as man- 
kind deviate from the correct principles of living by pandering to a 
perverted sense of taste, and the artificial modes of living, which they 
adopt ? I answered them in the same manner that you ask the ques- 
tions ; namely, by stating all the causes for the morbific condition of 
the blood, in the manner that I illustrated, from section to section, 
down unto this one upon the kidneys ; but I further answer your 
inquiry, that the kidneys are taxed to do a function by a thousand 
artificial morbid stimulants, goading their organization to a most 
exalted sense of excitability of secretion, developing thereby a mor- 
bid sensibility and exalted irritability for their function and elimina- 
tion that does not belong to them to do ; just precisely in the same 
manner as you see some old brute, in the shape of a human being — the 
image of God, as it were, which he is not worthy of — driving some 
poor, decrepit old horse, and trying to extort labor from this horse, 
which he has neither strength, nor blood, nor power to perform, 
because he has been deprived of food and nutrition suitable to 
make blood, and to give him vital stamina to perform the work re- 
quired of him ; and because this emaciated, broken-down, debilitated 
horse is not able to perform the requisite labor, his soulless master, in 
his wrath, makes him perform, by the application of his lash, what he 
does not physically or constitutionally possess stamina to perform ; so 
you, in turn, make your kidneys, you will understand, perform the 
same artificial and delegated duty which this heartless brute of a man 
extorts from his horse. You do it unthinkingly ; he does it as a brute ; 
but in a manner equally as cujpable as the brute who sits in his wagon 
does to his horse, when he whips him and extorts from him that labor 
which he has not strength and integrity of organism to perform, so 
you do the same to your kidneys, by introducing poisons into your 
stomach, secondly, into your blood — for what ? For the purpose of 
pleasing the sense of the nerves of taste, which you have excited and 
developed to an inordinate, ungodlike, unhallowed extent, by eating 



170 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

those unhealthy articles of food containing those poisons, inconsisten- 
cies, and incongruities that have been cooked up in your kitchen, and 
which you have so exceedingly enjoyed over the table and in your 
midnight revels, your late suppers, your bottle of Champagne — Cham- 
pagne which, instead of being made in Italy from the pure juice of the 
grape, was concocted in Newark, N. J., and sophisticated from Newark 
cider, and made to represent genuine Champagne by the addition of 
other materials— arsenic, lime, and potash, put in to generate artificial 
effervescence, carbonic-acid gas to sparkle in your glass, and convey to 
your imagination and your morbid perception the idea that it was the 
sparkling juice of the grape eliminated in the wine-vats of Champagne 
and Italy. Such is Yankee ingenuity — it is taxed almost to exhaustion 
— for what ? To make money, to devise idols of man's creation, to 
pander to wealth, and wealth, in turn, to the destruction of our own 
health and the sweets and comforts of life, by perverting the very 
sources of human health and human enjoyment. 

But you will say that I have defined health to consist in the har- 
monious action and performance of all the organs of the body. Such 
is the case, and it depends upon the skill of every enlightened person 
to maintain this harmony, which constitutes that nice balance of vital 
and chemical affinities — the law of life by which our bodies only can 
be sustained and preserved in health. A possession by you and 
every individual of this knowledge, is the attainment of the grand 
science of human life. 

Let us explain, then, in a few brief paragraphs, in language so clear 
and plain that every person can comprehend, if he will : 

First. Two very important actions are continually taking place in 
the body : first, the destruction of the different tissues of which it is 
composed; and, secondly, the depositing of fresh materials for its 
nutrition and repair. Both are admirably effected by the blood, a 
fluid which takes up different decomposed and waste matters, and car- 
ries to every part its requisite nutritive materials. 

In order, therefore, that the blood may be fit for the purpose, it is 
evident that fresh blood must be continually formed, in order to make 
up for the loss it sustains, and thdt it requires to be continually puri- 
fied. This we find to be accomplished by the digestion and respira- 
tion ; the one separating and rearranging the nutritive matters of our 
food ; the other, through the influence of the atmosphere, converting 
them into blood ; and, lastly, by the various secreting and excreting 
organs, which are of two kinds : first, those which separate from the 
blood its superabundant carbon and hydrogen — namely, the liver, the 
lungs, and the skin ; the first in the shape of bile, and the two last as 



TUBEKCULAE DISEASE OP THE KIDNEYS. 171 

carbonic acid and water ; secondly, those which remove from it its 
highly azotized or nitrogenized compounds, those materials which 
have formed the muscles, and which have again become decomposed 
as effete materials, such as urate and lithic acid. This latter function 
is devolved upon the kidneys and the skin. In addition to the above- 
mentioned eliminating organs, should be mentioned here, to keep the 
illustration clear, the bowels, which perform a wonderful function, if 
maintained in a state of healthy action. To make this more clear to 
the reader, we will remind him of what he well knows himself, when 
considering the fact, that in good health, every thing being equal — by 
that we mean, when all these eliminating organs are in a healthy con- 
dition — the urine looks clear, of a light, amber color. But each per- 
son can not have failed to notice that when they have taken a sudden 
cold, sustained a severe check of perspiration and closure of the pores 
of the skin, and the blood has suddenly receded from its surface, how 
soon the urine becomes changed from its natural amber color to a very 
high, or in other words, dark color, depositing large quantities of sedi- 
ment, and not unfrequently will great irritation be produced at the 
time of urinating, by these sediments in the urine producing scalding 
in urinating, and frequently great pain, or lameness across the loins 
and the region of the kidneys. 

You have here a practical illustration of the disturbed harmony of 
the relative function of these organs which one bears to another — the 
relation of their sympathies, if I may so term them, that exist between 
the different excreting organs — which prevents the performance of 
their respective functions, very frequently giving rise to a morbid con- 
dition of the system ; thus, when the functions of the skin are im- 
peded, those of the kidneys are increased, and vice versa; and when 
the powers of respiration are diminished, they are replaced by the 
increased activity of the liver ; and, lastly, when the latter is sluggish, 
the kidneys make up for the deficiency, by excreting a larger quantity 
of morbid material. 

This brings me, then, to the point to illustrate farther the manner in 
which so many diseases of the kidneys are generated. I haye briefly 
alluded to the errors of diet, to the imprudencies of cookery, and the 
indifferent manner in which most people take their food. They are no 
longer satisfied to have a generous, nutritious, sustaining diet in a 
plain and simple manner, which would be digestible, and form healthy 
chyme and chyle, and under ordinary circumstances, be assimilated 
into healthy blood, which, in turn, would nourish and sustain the wear 
and tear of the body. But the artifice of the cook, (our kind house- 
wives,) is taxed to jumble together many articles and agents, to make 



172 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

the food more palatable, -which compounds introduce into the blood 
poisons, as above hinted. They are not among the material primates 
which are requisite to sustain the system, and become poisons to the 
blood. These eliminating organs are taxed by their irritation to 
excrete them from the font of life — the blood. Standing foremost 
amongst these sentinels or guardians of our physical organism, are 
the Kidneys ; they, under the usual conditions of life, are the most 
ready for the performance of their functions ; hence, under this care- 
less and indifferent manner of our living, they are not only taxed to 
perform, their own legitimate natural function — to secrete and elimi- 
nate those principles occurring in the blood from the destruction of 
the tissues of our body — but they are made to do that which does not 
belong to them to do — namely, to secrete constantly, too, all those 
morbific materials which have been introduced into our blood when 
seeking to please our palate, in our manner of living and eating. 

In this wise, we have some of the most depressing and devitalizing 
diseases produced in the blood, which are too numerous to name here. 
For instance, oxalate of lime, one of the most deadly poisons, is found 
in the blood. Now, oxalate of lime is not introduced in our food, nor 
in our drinking, in the condition that we find it after analysis of the 
urine and as it appears w T hen brought under the microscope. Let us 
ask here, then, how these deadly poisons come into the blood? But 
had not the reader better ask, in the first place, what is this oxalate of 
lime ? We have referred to the instances of many diseases being pro- 
duced in the Kidneys by the use of lime or hard water, which pervades 
many sections of our country, and lime is introduced into the blood in 
this manner by drinking lime or hard water. As lime is thus introduced 
into the blood, going the rounds of the circulation, if it meets with a 
peculiar acid like that found in sorrel or in the pie-plant, or rhubarb as 
it is called, and which, by the way, is getting to be in general use, 
through the summer months, as an article of diet in our kitchens, being 
made into pies, etc. — the acid or sorrel of this pie-plant, which people 
eat so deliciously, and so exquisitely enjoy, is oxalic acid. They little 
think, at.the time that they are so delectably enjoying the cookery pre- 
pared from this article, that they are introducing into their stomachs, 
and from their stomachs into their blood, one of the most deadly poi- 
sons — how? Why, this acid, after it has passed into the blood, unites 
with the lime it there finds — that you have drank in your lime-water 
— and a new compound is the result, and that compound is oxalate of 
lime — the blending of the two. 

Well, what are the consequences, let me ask — what are the effects 
when this oxalate of lime is found to any great extent in the blood? 
We will here give the symptoms. 



TUBERCULAR DISEASE OP THE KIDNEYS. 173 

Persons affected with the form of disease referable to this class are 
generally remarkably depressed in spirits, and their melancholy aspect 
has often enabled me to suspect the presence of oxalic acid in the 
urine. Sometimes a peculiar lurid, greenish hue of the surface has 
been observed, but more generally the face has the dark and dingy 
aspect so common in some forms of dyspepsia in which the functions 
of the liver are deranged. They are generally much emaciated, ex- 
cepting in slight cases, extremely nervous and painfully susceptible to 
external impressions, often hypochondriacal to an extreme degree ; 
and in very many cases, labor under the impression that they are about 
to fall victims to Consumption. They complain bitterly of incapabil- 
ity of exerting themselves, the slightest exertion bringing on fatigue. 
Some feverish excitement, with the palms of the hands and the soles 
of the feet dry and parched, especially in the evening, is often present 
in severe cases. In temper, they are irritable and excitable ; in men 
the sexual power is generally deficient, and often absent, an effect prob- 
ably owing to the exhaustion produced by the excessive secretion of 
urea so common in this affection. A severe and constant pain, or 
sense of weight across the loins, is generally a prominent symptom, 
with often some amount of irritability of the bladder. The mental 
faculties are generally but slightly affected, loss of memory being 
sometimes more or less present. Well-marked dyspeptic feelings are 
always complained of. Indeed, in most of the cases in which I have 
been consulted, I have been generally told that the patient was ailing, 
losing flesh, health, and spirits, daily ; or remaining persistently ill 
and weak, without any definite or demonstrable cause. The urine is 
always of high specific gravity after being within the diabetic range, 
and seldom below 1025 or 1030. 

The. careful reader can not but perceive, after noting these symp- 
toms manifested by this condition of the blood, what must be the 
direful effects upon the system, weighing down and prostrating the 
vital energies in that distressing manner, so that, in many instances, 
life itself not only becomes a burden, but, as we have before said, 
almost a cruel bitter to the subject himself. 

We have, in our extensive practice, in treating urinary diseases, and 
diseases of the Kidneys, met with many such cases. We meet with 
them, in fact, daily, and they are becoming just as prevalent in the 
United States, and just as fatal as Tubercular Consumption itself ; for 
the very reason that there are an innumerable combination of causes to 
place the system in a condition for these and other morbid poisons to 
be generated in the blood continually. This oxalate of lime, diathesis, 
or disposition of the blood, occurs extensively among inveterate smok- 



174 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION". 

era and chewers of tobacco. It is readily developed in men who are 
victims to their own passions — who exhaust the vital energies of their 
system by excess in tins manner ; hence, the nerves distributed to the 
kidneys and urino-sexual organs become paralyzed, in many instances, 
so that the victims are incapable of evacuating the bladder, suffering 
the greatest inconvenience thereby, and subjecting themselves to the 
necessity of using mechanical means — by the introduction of the 
catheter — to accomplish this function. 

It is but a little time ago, that we were called upon to prescribe for 
a patient suffering in this manner, in St. Lawrence Co., N". Y., who ha$ 
been obliged to introduce a catheter several times a day, for three 
years and upward, before death ensued. But this is not all. Perfect 
impotence and entire paralysis of the male sexual organs and functions 
result from the combination of these causes above named. 

Diseases consequent upon the formation of this poison — namely, oxal- 
ate of lime — in the blood, are becoming so very prevalent, it is highly 
essential that we should dwell at further length upon it. In many chron • 
ic diseases, especially in certain forms of chronic dyspepsia, attended 
by gastralgia, or nervous pains of the stomach, oxalate of lime is often 
found in the urine, and seems to act as a local irritant. This is exceed- 
ingly frequent among persons whose nervous systems become much 
excited by anxiety and the pressure of important business. It has 
occurred to us repeatedly, to notice this state of things in hard stu- 
dents, those who tax their wits inordinately to live and make money, 
instead of their muscles — lawyers, judges, and other literary and stu- 
dious people. This irritability of the bladder, so common an ailment 
among many members of the legal profession, has been, in the many 
cases which have come under our notice, accompanied by the excretion 
of crystals of the oxalate of lime. One very interesting case in par- 
ticular, which came under our treatment, occurred in the person of 
Judge Thomas L. Smith, of Indiana, in which the effect of this poison 
had been so long continued in being secreted by the kidneys, that it 
had produced a perfect abrasion of the healthy coating of the bladder 
at its neck and prostate gland. In this condition, several years before 
being brought to our notice, he had sought treatment from physi- 
cians in various parts of the country, unavailingly ; he made two trips 
to Saratoga, where he spent two seasons in the use of the water, 
hoping to find a cure thereby, but was disappointed. The tortures 
that he suffered, while in this condition, were beyond human power 
to tell. Let the reader imagine what must have been his condition, 
when having the mucous membranes of the bladder, or its neck, 
in an entirely raw state for years, and the secretion of the urine, 



TUBERCULAR DISEASE OF THE KIDNEYS. 



175 



loaded down with lime, passing over it several times in twenty-four 
hours. An idea of the suffering can only be gained by throwing lime 
into the naked or inflamed eye. 

The derangement in the function 
and process of urinating was not 
only accompanied by extreme pain 
and suffering, but a mechanical 
derangement, by fresh accumula- 
tions and abrasions of the mucous 
tissues of the bladder, as they 




were freshly formed, passing off 
rapidly in the urine, so thick and 
slimy that the subject was fre- 
quently obliged to pull them from 
the urethra. This was the condi- 
tion of Judge Smith when brought 
to our notice. As aggravated, and 
Urinary deposit of Triple Phosphate, found almogfc appar ently hopeless, as was 

in the urine of Judge Smith, under our ,. -..,. , , -i i» 

° his condition, we treated his case 

microscope. 

with the most happy results. 

We here make extracts from Judge Smith's letters, received from 
time to time, advising us of his continued progress under our treat- 
ment : 

New- Alb any, Ind., May 13th, 1860. 

Dear Doctor : Your letters of the 5th and 8th of May, 1860, and also the 
box of medicines, forwarded by express, have been received. Your prompt and 
carefully minute investigation of my case, merits my gratitude, and satisfies me 
that I could scarcely have trusted myself in more competent and faithful hands. 
I shall endeavor to prove myself worthy of your kindness, by strict adherence 
to your directions, and shall take great pleasure in testifying to the services I 
think I have reason to believe you will render me in every possible way. 

Thomas L. Smith. 

New-Albany, Ind., May 25th, 1860. 
My Dear Doctor: I find that your medicines are producing a marked 
effect. The irritation which occasioned such frequent desire to urinate is very 
much diminished, insomuch that, while before taking them I was obliged to get 
up several times during the night, I have, since using them, been able to keep my 
bed sometimes all night, and seldom, if ever, am obliged to rise more than once. 
I observe the same effect during the day. I can now pass two or three hours with- 
out inconvenience, while before, from a half-hour to an hour were the usual pe- 
riods. I feel much encouraged now to find that I can retain much more water 
than formerly ; for a considerable time, I could not retain more than an ounce 
or two, and began to apprehend that the bladder was becoming contracted in 



176 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

some way ; but I now find that I can carry almost, or sometimes, perhaps, as 
much as in usual health. 

My general health, appetite, digestion, etc., continue to be good. My ac- 
quaintances generally observe to me that I am looking very well. 

Thomas L. Smith. 

Dr. A. Stone, Troy, N. Y. 

New-Albany, Ind., August 7th, 1860. 
My Dear Doctor : I take great pleasure in informing you, that since I re- 
ceived the last box of medicine, I have improved very much indeed. I can, 
indeed, scarcely realize myself that I am so much better ; in fact, I am at present 
almost entirely relieved of all unpleasant symptoms. The soreness about the 
region of the bladder has gradually abated ; the mucous discharges have almost 
ceased ; and I am now able to attend to my usual business without any incon- 
venience whatever. Thomas L. Smith. 

New-Albany, Ind., August 13th, 1860. 

My Dear Doctor : I am doing so extremely well, that I am astonished at the 
great change which has taken place in my condition within a short time. There 
is some little soreness yet, but I experience so little inconvenience, that if there 
should be no change for the worse, I should have but little to complain of. I 
remain very truly your friend, etc., Thomas L. Smith. 

Dr. Andrew Stone, Troy, N. Y. 

Note. — The invalid reader who may feel interested in the treatment of such cases, 
however deplorable they may be, will observe that we can treat our patients at a great 
distance off, and not see them, as we have done the above case, from the necessary 
analysis of the urine, and by the patient answering such interrogatories as we furnish at 
the time. 

But this condition of the blood, which has been discovered by study 
of urinary pathology, by the analysis of the urine, and bringing the 
deposits or materials therein found under a microscope, is but one 
in a long chain of other disorders almost equally as afflicting, and of 
as common occurrence. For instance, we have what is termed urinary 
calculi, constituting gravel and stone, which is found not only in the 
bladder, but up in the kidneys themselves. The suffering produced 
by gravel, or calculi — which means lime forming in substance in the 
kidneys — passing down their conductors into the bladder, and so in the 
bladder when passed from the bladder through the urethra of the 
male ; for instance, it becomes not only suffering, but perfect torture. 
These diseases are of an every-day occurrence ; and they destroy the 
lives of thousands, after they have lived, perhaps, through years of 
prolonged suffering and agony. 



TUBERCULAR DISEASE OF THE KIDNEYS. 177 

The reader will ask how this is generated in the kidneys or in the 
bladder. The answer is, it does not come from drinking hard or lime 
water — though such is the case in many instances. There are thousands 
of instances where this calculary formation takes place with those that 
never drink hard or lime-water even. It occurs in various ways, then, 
by the same errors of diet that we have above spoken of, generating 
morbid secretions in the stomach, perverting the chyme or chyle, and 
introducing morbid acids into the blood, which, coming in contact with 
this urate of ammonia — which you will understand to be the result 
of the waste of the tissues of the body — it again reverts back in your 
blood— for what ? For the purpose of being eliminated by the kid- 
neys, but, meeting these extraneous formations — these morbid acids 
which are introduced— it passes from the kidneys in the shape of an 
excess of uric acid ; hence, these calculary diseases come about in this 
manner. 

Many plain, old-fashioned people — I mean in their methods of living — 
not subjects to the dyspepsia of the present day — which is the offspring 
of luxurious forms of diet — will wonder, when they read this section, 
how they became so subject to gravel and to calculary formation, that 
they suffered so much from, by turns — at times ; for many such do ex- 
tremely suffer with pains in the loins, weakness across the back and in 
the kidneys — meaning neuralgia of the sciatic nerves, extending over 
the loins and down the hips and the limbs — anomalous rheumatic pains. 
They see strange indications of this morbid derangement in their blood 
by the muddy, sedimentary appearance of their water often, and they 
greatly wonder at its cause ; they, too, will be surprised when we tell 
them that the very cause, to them, lies in ambush in their favorite bev- 
erage — hard, cider. Now, it is this great use of hard cider among 
country farmers that causes such a formation of gravel and calculi, and 
the diseases and irritation that spring therefrom, on the same chemical 
principle that we have just alluded to, by the formation of these acids 
in the stomach by bad living. Acid cider comes in contact with the 
urate of ammonia in the blood, and causes it to pass off in a new form- 
ation and excess of uric acid, occasioning the red sand or brick-dust 
deposit so frequently observed in your chamber-vessels. But even 
when it has not lodged in the kidneys or bladder, and formed gravel, 
stones, and limy concretions, it passes off in the urine, when the blood 
is in this condition, keeping up an extraordinary amount of morbid ir- 
ritation throughout the whole nervous system, but particularly upon 
the nerves of the kidneys, and nerves of the bladder and sexual organs ; 
hence the suffering to both male and female, particularly the males — 

for their urethra is so much smaller, that it is beyond human power to 

12 



178 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

narrate — occasioned by these morbid formations in the shape of lime, 
oxalate of lime, uric acid, urate of ammonia, phosphates of lime, and 
the triple phosphates of other poisons passing off in great abundance 
in certain classes of victims, and those who live so recklessly. 

But we find we are swelling our book too extensively to go into the 
full merits and details of urinary diseases and diseases of the kidneys, 
produced by man perverting the functions of the skin, and all the func- 
tions that we have named, by his recklessness of living and his cul- 
pable neglect. 

Be it understood by you that all these diseases, however intricate 
and mysterious they may appear, may readily be investigated and 
thoroughly comprehended and understood by one who makes this de- 
partment of medicine a study, and possesses accurate knowledge of 
the science of animal chemistry of man and microscopic anatomy. 

CASE. 

Remarkable Cure of Paralysis of the Bladder, occasioned by the long- 
continued use of lime-water. Certificate of James Tobias, of Kindcrhook, N. Y. 

Kinderhook, N. Y., September 1, 1860. 

Some two years ago and upward, I was very much afflicted with pain in 
the region of the kidneys, across the loins and back, attended with great weak- 
ness. I was troubled at times with difficulty in passing my water, which was 
thick and sedimentary after standing ; this difficulty ultimately terminated in 
an inability to retain my water at night. The trouble continued for a year and 
a half. I spent a season at Saratoga Springs, and made free use of the waters 
of those Springs, hoping thereby to find relief, but I was disappointed. 

I passed the whole of the winter and spring in this deplorable condition, until 
in May, when I learned of the skill and success of Dr. Stone in treating kidney 
and calculary diseases. I therefore consulted him, and before giving him any 
history of my case, first employed him to analyze my urine, which he did in my 
presence. He discovered large depositions of lime in the urine, and at once told 
me that I had been making use of limestone water as a beverage, and probably 
for a long time, which had been the cause of this paralysis of the bladder ; which 
opinion accorded with my own. I put myself under his care and treatment, 
and in six weeks' time I had the full control of my bladder, and could retain the 
urine throughout the night. My cure has been steadily progressing, until, after 
the lapse of more than a year, I can say I am fully cured, for which I feel deeply 
grateful to Dr. Stone and the combined skill of the fraternity of the Troy Lung 
and Hygienic Institute. From my knowledge of the great experience of Dr. 
Stone in treating very extensively diseases of the urinary and genital organs, 
I believe him remarkably skilled, and cordially recommend all so afflicted to 
consult him. James Tobias. 



TUBERCULAR DISEASE OF THE KIDNEYS. 179 

As we have before said in the preliminary chapter of this book, it is 
not necessary for patients at a great distance from our Institution to 
visit us, or that we should see them personally, to completely fathom 
and understand what ails them, and explain more definitely and 
clearly by writing than they could give us to understand themselves 
personally, if they would forward to us a specimen of their morning's 
(blood) urine for analysis. Indeed, so perfect is this great science, so 
well founded upon great, natural principles of chemistry, that not only 
every agent and every material that exists, morbid or otherwise, in the 
blood, can be thrown down and detected, but a very clear and definite 
idea can be obtained by the physician, or investigator thereof, of what 
have been the errors of living, and pernicious habits, and their neglect 
to attend to the great, counterbalancing functions of the body, to de- 
stroy that harmonious action and balance which constitute human 
health, but which now, when once destroyed, have produced these 
morbid derangements and these direful diseases which they seek, in 
their agony, to be rid of. 

We feel bound, in our duty, as the great messenger of health, to 
afford such that consolation, that if the organs — namely, the kidneys 
or the bladder, or the prostate gland in the male, comprising the 
urino-sexual organs in either male or female, if they have not resulted 
in a disease of structure (disorganization) too great — that science yet 
affords him or her, as it may be, a cure. For you, therefore, there 
yet may be balm in Gilead — a physician there capable of assuaging 
your agonies and healing those wounds, those lesions that you, in your 
recklessness or ignorance, have allowed to obtain a place in that noble 
structure formed by Omnipotent wisdom, and loaned to you for the 
great purpose of developing your immortality, and fitting it for that 
nobler sphere which lies beyond the tomb. 

But before we close this section on this important and scientific class 
of maladies, which are becoming so peculiarly afflictive to our Ameri- 
can people, it becomes us to admonish the reader to stop and reflect 
here, especially if he be a subject of some one of those torturing diseases 
that we have enumerated, how sweet are the comforts of health ! How 
happy and peculiarly exhilarating ! Beyond human power to narrate 
are the enjoyments that flow from this complicated organism which 
our heavenly Father has so kindly loaned us. How much wiser would 
it be for us, its tenants, to possess it and maintain it with wisdom and 
intelligence, and carry it along with us harmoniously, the natural period 
designed in the structure thereof, over a series of seventy, eighty, one 
hundred years and more, without feeling those exquisite tortures that 



ISO PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

attend its abuse ; then, at the close of a length of years, long and well 
expended, we should stand up, looking down upon a number of gener- 
ations that have come upon this footstool into being since our existence ; 
we should stand over them crowned with gray hairs, indicating the 
years of our wisdom and intelligence, as guides to them, how consist- 
ently they might live, as some tall, majestic oak stands, with out- 
stretched arms, its dead limbs shading, as it were, numberless other 
younger trees, sprouts, and vegetation growing at its base. Under 
an existence thus spent, our exit would be no longer attended with 
those excruciating tortures that follow those organic derangements in 
the manner that we have alluded to ; but we should lay down this noble 
and majestic form, after the fulfillment of its purpose, without a murmur 
or a sigh, as easily, as calmly, and as gently as the flickerings of an ex- 
piring taper, "like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him, 
and lies down to pleasant dreams." 



TAPE-WORM. 181 



StmvtttiXkU Sftdku. 



Tape -Worm, Taenia Solium; its intimate connection with 
Tubercular and Scrofulous Constitutions. 

The intelligent and acute reader can not have failed to observe our 
disposition to trace the cause of Tubercular Consumption to a mor- 
bid condition of the blood, and that we have traced and associated 
Tubercular Consumption with Scrofula, which are both allied. But 
there is justly a distinction between the tubercular condition and the 
scrofulous condition, inasmuch as Scrofula is more subtle in its general 
nature, having a more diversified foundation of morbific causes, con- 
stituting a subtle and ethereal virus, which operates to manifest itself 
in a thousand protean forms of disease, all connected by different links 
in the same great chain, back, not only in the blood, the foundation of 
early physical life, but also generated by a deficiency of soul and life- 
power on the part of the progenitors of such offspring that become 
so hideously affected ; and, in many thousands of instances perhaps, 
the progenitors of such offspring have mingled the varied forms of 
virus to propagate this in their offspring, by violation of the laws of 
chastity and virtue. 

To such a heterogeneous extent do the many causes which take rise 
in envenomed and unbridled passions embody, in so many inscrutable 
forms, the virus of varied contagious diseases, that science is not capa- 
ble, by any power of art, to measure the subtlety of their malignancy, 
and the varied shapes and tinges which they give to themselves in the 
future offspring and progeny. 

The reader will notice, therefore, that we enumerated in the features 
of Tubercular Consumption a great variety of diseases taking place 
and causing death in various ways, from different periods of infantile 
life upward ; and that we traced them all as belonging to the same 
class that resulted, in later periods of life, in tubercular formations in 
the lungs, and again, back to this fatal source, which for ages has been 
denominated Scrofula. And then, we have again said, that to Scrofula 
belongs another class, and other varied forms of disease, connected in 



182 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

the great, subtle chain of causes, back in the blood and in the life-prin- 
ciple thereof, to which, we said, belonged intestinal worms, and partic- 
ularly that class known as Tape- Worm. 

Every one knows that children, at very early ages too, are subject 
to worms of various kinds, and that worms give rise to many fright- 
ful and alarming symptoms, and often result in death, in infancy and 
early childhood, by producing convulsions. 

Hydrocephalus, or dropsy of the brain, that we referred to, hooping- 
cough, spasms, Chorea Sancti Viti, or Saint Vitus' dance, of children, 
which is an automatic or uncontrollable movement of the limbs, from 
morbid derangements or aberration of the nervous system, are pro- 
duced by worms, from their irritation upon the nerves of the stomach 
and bowels, having a reflex action upon the brain, through what is 
termed the recurrent or reflex system of nerves. Strabismus, or 
squinting, cross-eyes, in many instances, stammering, impediments 
of speech, morbid appetite, by producing deranged secretions of the 
stomach and alimentary canal, and tumid condition of the bowels, 
fetid breath, decayed teeth, marasmus, or a general pining and wast- 
ing away of the body and vital tissues, and finally, Consumption in a 
variety of forms, in many and many instances proceed from intestinal 
worms. 

The curious reader will wonder and ask the question, "What can be 
the cause of children being subject to worms, and so many varieties 
too ? "Without stopping to enter into any lengthy detail here, as we 
have before said, it would be swelling our book too much, in a word, 
it is Scrofula. The previous condition for many children to contract 
this developing cause for the worms with which they are infected, is 
Scrofula, laid back in embryo, and induced by the shortcomings and 
sins of their progenitors. 

"We can not stop to describe the many species of smaller worms to 
which children alone are mainly subject ; but shall proceed to dwell 
at some greater length upon the species of worm which heads the 
present section, and which figures conspicuously in the causes of both 
Tubercular and that other more insidious cause of Consumption called 
marasmus, or wasting away of the whole tissues of the body ; involv- 
ing at the same time a wasting of the juices and fluids of the body and 
the blood — namely, Tape-worm. 

Many years ago, while we were but yet on the threshold of life, our 
attention was attracted, our sympathies aroused, and the most pro- 
found interest excited in us, by the death of a much-loved female 
friend, occasioned by Tape-worm. She was a lady of uncommon 
beauty, with a fair complexion, sprightly temperament, and genial dis- 



TAPE-WOKM. 183 

position, and who captivated the affections of every one by whom 
she was known, and with whom she was connected in life. Though 
quite young, she had been led to the hymeneal altar by a relative of 
ours, and like all congenial hearts who join, from purest motives, the 
hymeneal band, they indulged in the fondest and most sanguine hopes 
of long years of happiness, while performing the pilgrimage of life. 
But as in the case of that fell destroyer, (consumption,) altogether un- 
looked for and unthoaght of, the worm lay back — hidden, devel- 
oping itself in an inscrutable, mysterious manner. 

But I w r ish to speak here of what was the more immediate cause of 
the death of this beautiful lady, which produced indescribable horror 
in the circle w r ith which she was connected — namely, the means used so 
unskillfully in the hands of an old allopathic practitioner. Her health 
had not as yet seriously suffered from being troubled with the Tape- 
worm, which was frequently discharged in pieces of varied lengths, as 
is usual in such cases, only the alarm manifested on finding that she 
w r as harboring and feeding such a hideous parasite within, gave rise to 
so much anxiety, that it urged on her physician to prescribe heroic 
doses of a remedy that was deemed by him, or the faculty in those 
days, to be a certain specific. 

At the first onset of his treatment, before trying any of the vegeta- 
ble remedies, which are now known to be perfectly harmless in them- 
selves, and almost a certain remedy to effect its dislodgment — instead of 
using, at first, the less potent and more harmless agents of the materia 
medica, the one old-fashioned remedy alone was adopted — namely, giv- 
ing spirits of turpentine, or in other words, oil of turpentine, in frequent 
and large doses, so injudiciously, that an active inflammation of the 
stomach and bowels was produced, together with functional organic 
derangement of the kidneys and other organs of the body, to that 
extent that death was produced in this melancholy manner ; instead 
of her having fallen a sacrifice to the parasite which the prescription 
sought to remove. 

From the circumstance that led us to adopt our medical studies 
when young, which we have mentioned in the preliminary sections of 
this work, we were prepared to reflect upon this case, in the full ex- 
tent of its magnitude ; hence, we ever bore in mind the prominent and 
yet melancholy termination of the first case that ever came to our 
knowledge of Tape-worm. 

Coincident with our investigation of Tubercular Consumption has 
ever been that of Scrofula and all its concomitant features, and as we 
advance in years, our profession assumes new and more interesting 
features every day, just in proportion as the progress of science enables 



18-i PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

an enthusiastic devotee to discover new diseases and varied manifesta- 
tions, and trace them to their legitimate cause. But the idea that 
fixed itself upon our youthful mind then was the wonderful fact, 
namely, that human beings should embody, within themselves, other 
living objects that were generated so mysteriously, and altogether un- 
knowingly, and that they entertained those small and insignificant 
objects (when viewed externally in a natural condition) which should 
become so wrapped up in the higher grades of human organism, as to 
be the cause of our death. 

Tantamount with our arduous investigations and pursuits of Tuber- 
cular Consumption, has been the department embodying entozoa, or 
parasites, which are found and develop themselves in the human body ; 
hence, to arrive at the cause for the immediate generation and develop, 
ment of every species of worms, would be a wonderful attainment of 
science. 

We have given some hints, in the preceding section on Scrofula, why 
the Jews prohibited pork ; we suggested, also, some reasons in relation 
to the tubercular swellings of the glands of the neck. But our inves- 
tigations have led us to believe, that the Jews, in making an edict to 
universally prohibit the use of pork, were prompted to do so by some 
more important reason than because it produced glandular swellings 
known as Scrofula ; for it has been ascertained that Tape-worm was 
known by them to have its origin in the use of swine, and that they 
were greatly afflicted with Tape-worm, which they attributed to eating 
swine's flesh ; hence the edict for its prohibition. 

Many scientific men, since the discovery of the microscope, have 
investigated this department of their profession with enthusiasm, to 
discover the origin of these parasites or worms, and these efforts have 
resulted in the most satisfactory discoveries ; for they discovered, to a 
certainty, the mode by which they are propagated from one animal to 
another, and the transfusion thereof from animal to man. 

The history of these parasites is as interesting as the results attend- 
ing them are melancholy and fatal. No doubt the curious reader will 
feel an interest to know something of the history of these singular 
parasites, which all are, more or less, liable to be afflicted with. 

Says Vogt, now professor at Geneva, in Letters on Physiology , 
Vol. I., page 3G1 : " A further class of animals, whose origin till now 
was not understood, is the series of intestinal worms, those interior 
parasites, living at the expense of other animals. We find these worms 
not only in the intestinal canal and its side-cavities, which they reach 
from without, but in the interior also of organs totally closed, into 
which they can not penetrate unless by forcible destruction and perfo- 



TAPE-WOEM. 185 

ration. In the cerebral substance of the sheep there is an inclosed 
tape-worm, producing a well-known fatal disease ; in the interior of 
the eye-ball of fish (in the very center) worms are frequent ; in the 
muscles of animal and man, in the teguments, even in the cartilage and 
the bone, we find sometimes intestinal worms, which by no means 
could penetrate from without through these total inclosures." 

"In- the face of these facts, what other presumption can be allowable 
than the one, namely, that these parasites are generated at the expense 
of the substance of the living animal ? Nor is this all. Each genus of 
animal is harboring its particular parasites, and but few different spe- 
cies of worms may be found on different animals. 

" The latest experiments aiming at the solution of these problems 
have given a complete answer to these questions. Microscopic anato- 
my has first demonstrated that the organs of generation, as also the 
embryons and eggs of the intestinal worm are immensely numerous. 
A tape-worm has, in each of its articulations, (of several thousands of 
which it may be composed,) a complete male and female apparatus, 
and each link contains hundreds and even thousands of eggs, not to be 
destroyed in putrid liquids and chemical caustic substances, or is the 
least mutable by severe heating. A single worm is bringing forth in 
its ovaries during the year about sixty millions of microscopic eggs of 
an exceedingly tenacious vitality. We know that the Tape-worm of 
certain fish push off their links full of eggs every spring, while the 
head remains within ; we know that behind this head, during sum- 
mer and fall, new links are growing ; that during the winter the links 
are filling up with eggs, again to be pushed off in their turn the next 
spring, and so forth. 

" The same proceeding takes place with the large Tape- worm of man, 
JBothriacephcdus, the same periodical dismembering and pushing off, 
with only the exception of a double round per year, in the spring and 
in the fall. At these times, the troubles the Tape-worm is apt to create 
are necessarily of greater intensity, lasting till the links, filled to the 
utmost with eggs, begin to drop off. From these facts it will be seen, 
that hundreds of thousands of eggs may perish without the danger of 
a destruction of the worm species. Among so many will the one or 
other egg perchance fall on a favorable mother-ground, to be further 
developed, while all the others not so lucky will perish, and well may 
we say that the pernicious influences need certainly be great and rav- 
aging, shall a veritable inundation of intestinal worms be avoided. A 
man, a child, harboring only a dozen worms — a thing surely not alto- 
gether very seldom — sends in one single year seventy-two millions of 
eggs to the sewers. This productive ammoniacal liquid is in many 



186 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

countries the very essence of horticulture and agriculture ; whilst in 
others it is not utilized, and runs off to creeks and rivers. Millions and 
millions of those eggs may perish, but the one or other is swallowed 
perhaps on a lettuce-leaf, perhaps with a drink of water, and this one 
single individual, developed into existence out from this one egg y suf- 
fices to reproduce new millions of eggs — given over to the same fate 
— fatal or again reproductive. 

" The geographical diffusion of the tape-worm gives us in this respect 
interesting relations. This " individual" is in Switzerland, in Belgium, 
Holland, Poland, and Russia extraordinarily frequent, in the first- 
named countries especially, so frequent as in many localities to provide 
almost every inhabitant with its tapes. In Germany and France, we 
find this worm only in people formerly living for some time in those 
countries. Native Germans and Frenchmen, never leaving their home- 
country, are often visited by a different Tape-worm species, the " Tae- 
nia solium" creating very severe sufferings, and indeed not easily to 
be expelled. It is not difficult to see how frequently, if not generally, 
the Tape-worm is found, when we consider that this worm often pos- 
sesses several thousands of links ; that each link is sexually a perfect 
individual ; that each link is " awfully" rich in microscopic eggs ; that 
by a periodical (semi-yearly) dropping of the eggs, the sewers are full 
of them ; that the liquid of the sewers is sprinkled over the garden 
greens ; and that, lastly, lettuce and cabbage, and parsley, etc., furnish 
us with the Tape-worm eggs. In short ; it is only by some wonder, 
every body has not its Tape-worm.'' 

This history and description of the manner in which they enter the 
human stomach, and become propagated in the stomach and bowels 
of man, show the immense liability of every person who uses vege- 
tables even, unless they are grown under their own eyes, and with the 
use of extreme caution, to avoid all application of such animal and vege- 
table compost and manure from the barn-yard and the pig-pens of the 
farm-yard, in their growth and culture. Even with the greatest 
amount of caution, in the avoidance of such applications to vegetables 
in their culture, still the eggs of these animals may be transmitted from 
plant to plant, taken on vegetables and fruits in various ways unthought 
of and unsuspected. 

Many people are extremely careless and indifferent in regard to the 
fruit that they eat, and the condition it is in when they put it into their 
stomachs. Thousands of people are in the habit of eating apples and 
other fruit infected by w r orms, and embodying the ova, or eggs of 
insects of many kinds ; hence the eggs of not only the Tape-worm, but 
all the other species of worms, and the larvae of many insects are car- 



TAPE-WORM. 187 

ried into the stomach of man in this way. This accounts satisfactorily 
and scientifically for the extensive prevalence of these frightful para- 
sites — Tape-worms. 

It is well known that many insects, propelled by the law of instinct 
which governs their nature, are constantly seeking opportunities, during 
the summer season, to deposit their eggs in a convenient nidus, or 
nest, for their development and propagation. It is necessary that a 
due amount of temperature should be brought in apposition for their 
development and fructification, as is the case in all the lower grades of 
insect and animal life. Hence, the gad-fly deposits its eggs in the nos- 
trils of sheep, and the fatality among sheep from this cause, from the 
ravages of the grub in the head and brain, is extensive. Also the bot- 
fly deposits its eggs on the knees and legs of the horse, so that the 
horse will take them into his mouth when biting his legs. Worms, 
governed by the same law of instinct, seek to burrow in fruits, and 
there deposit their eggs, that they may find a conveyance into the 
stomach of animals and men, which is a fitting nidus for their develop- 
ment and propagation. 

The reader will perceive by this in how many innumerable ways 
death lies in ambush, even in the blushing and tempting fruit that we 
eat so deliciously, little thinking that it embodies the means of our 
physical destruction ! So wonderful and mysterious is the economy 
of nature ! 

These curious incidents in natural history embody very instructive 
lessons, and afford evidence of resources for much moral reflection ; 
they appeal with a warning voice to us to excite our apprehension, to 
stimulate our caution for self-preservation, to preserve our bodies un- 
contaminated by the thousand mysterious dangers which beset our 
path on every side in life ; they appeal to all the moral faculties of our 
nature in a language most thrilling and godlike, teaching us that life 
to man is valuable, and that the body which entombs our immortality 
should be guarded and preserved free from all liability to infection and 
premature dissolution, so that the ends of Omnipotence in us here 
should not be frustrated. 

Here is the fitting place for us to express our professional opinion, 
and give some evidences of our great experience in the abuse of that 
much talked-of and extensively used article — pork. We have hinted 
in the foregoing section. on Scrofula that, under certain conditions, we 
did not doubt that the meat of swine might become as healthy as the 
meat of cows or sheep. Such is our opinion. But how does this com- 
port, in the large majority of instances, wherein the meat of swine is 
used for food ? We ask the intelligent reader if it is not the case, in 



188 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

a domestic point of view, in all the small towns, villages, ah ! and cities 
too, throughout the whole United States, where swine are kept and 
fatted for consumption, if the food given them does not, more or less, 
consist of offal, slops, decayed and worm-eaten fruit, and cores of fruit, 
containing the seeds of worms and larva), setting aside every other 
form of decomposed animal and vegetable matter, unfit to go into the 
stomach and to make blood, muscle, and meat to be consumed in turn 
by man, and converted into his blood, bone, and muscle, to sustain his 
body — which is the temple of the Holy Ghost! 

Here you have our opinion, based upon great experience in regard 
to one manner in which Scrofula, in many of its hideous forms, is pro- 
pagated in the United States, and more especially for the cause of it, 
and the manner in which Tape-worm is propagated in the human 
system. 

Fearful of being suspected of egotism in attributing to pork the great 
cause for Tape-worm, and the various manifestations of Scrofula as we 
have witnessed it, we will corroborate our experience by quoting the 
opinion of Doctor Weinland on this subject — a man who has devoted 
years in studying and investigating the causes for Tape-worm in a great 
variety of animals, and who pursued his investigations minutely with 
the microscope. 

" Tape-worms are found in all classes of vcrtebrated animals, fishes as well as 
land animals, different species of animals generally having different species of 
tape-worms ; that of the horse differing from that of the ass, that of the sheep 
from that of the goat, and that of the rat from that of the mouse. 

" The common human tape-worm lives and grows in the bowels. Its head is 
provided with four suckers, with a cluster of little hooks, by means of which it 
attaches itself to the intestine, the body floating two or three yards down, and 
absorbing the nourishing juices either through small openings or through the 
skin. The body consists of several hundred rings or sections, which grow out of 
the head, so that those nearest the head are the youngest, and the oldest are at 
the end of the tail. The creature is an hermaphrodite, and as the joints mature, 
the sexual organs are developed, the male and female both in the same joint. 
The joints then break off, and each one is a complete living animal, preserving- 
its existence frequently for a considerable time, and laying numbers of eggs after 
it is broken off. 

" The eggs pass out by the faeces, and never hatch unless they enter the stom- 
ach of a hog. But if the joints arc eaten by a hog, or if the eggs find their way 
into water that is drunk by swine, the eggs hatch in the hog's stomach, pro- 
ducing animals so small as to be invisible to the naked eye, but which, under 
the microscope, are seen to have three pairs of spines, by means of which they 
bore their way through the walls of the blood-vessels and enter into the circula. 
tion. Here they are carried into the muscles of the hog, where they grow into 



TAPE- "WORM. 189 

a curious animal, having the head and neck of a human tape-worm, with a round 
bladder tail, and producing the disease called measles. It has long been known 
that measly pork was caused by this little bladder-tailed animal, but it is only 
within a few years that the curious fact has been ascertained that this animal is 
the larva of the common human tape-worm. It is now proved by careful observ- 
ation, that if one of these animals is taken into the human stomach the bladder- 
like tail is digested, while the living head and neck pass down into the intestine, 
where they hook on, and the rings begin rapidly to grow out into the well-known 
tape- worm. 

" Other species of tape-worms living in other animals, have a natural history 
similar to that of the human tape-worm. They all live in the intestines of ver- 
tebrated animals, (animals with backbones,) and each species must be hatched 
in the stomach of some animal different from that in which it is developed. For 
instance, one of the tape-worms of the dog is hatched in the stomach of a hare, 
and another in that of an ox, and the tape-worm of a cat is hatched in the stom- 
achs of rats and mice. 

"About two hundred species of tape-worms have been described, five of them 
being found in man. There are only two, however, that are at all common. 
One of these is a narrow worm with hooks on its head, found particularly in the 
Teutonic nations, (Germans, English, and Americans,) and the broad tape-worm 
without hooks, which seems to live almost solely in the Swiss and in the Scla- 
vonic nations. The former and more. common of these two species has a head 
about the size of a pin's head, and the body gradually widens to about a quarter 
of an inch, sometimes reaching a length of twenty-four feet. Tape-worms have 
been found in sheep one hundred feet long." 

The presence of tape-worm in the human body will at length cause 
a great variety of diseases and morbid manifestations. The most promi- 
nent symptoms by which we may suspect its presence, are a dull, con- 
tinued pain in the forehead, giddiness, buzzing in the ears, dullness 
of the eyes, which are surrounded by a dark circle, cedematis, or 
swollen eyelids, dilated pupils, frequent spasmodic movements of the 
eyes, alternate paleness and flushing of the cheeks, paleness of the lips, 
peculiar motions of the nose and mouth, emaciation, alternate loss and 
excess of appetite, cravings for particular articles of food, offensive 
breath, furred tongue, spitting and vomiting a thin mucus in the 
mornings, itching at the nose, anus, and vulva, grinding of the teeth, 
especially during sleep, constriction of the throat, swelling of the belly, 
chronic shooting pains and a sense of pinching about the umbilicus, 
feeling in the morning as of a foreign body moving in the bowels. If 
the patient be a female, violent hysterical fits will often occur, fre- 
quently epileptic attacks'; the face is not merely pale, there is also an 
aspect of languor, heaviness, much increased by a drooping of the 
upper lids of the eyes in a severe case. "When epilepsy, or fits of a 



190 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION". 

hysterical character, take place in men, the cause is the existence of 
Tape-worm ; but there are other diseases in males which may frequent- 
ly be traced directly to the existence of this worm also. 

M. S., a young man of twenty-two years of age, a student of a cele- 
brated school in this State, consulted us some two years since, in 
regard to seminal emissions, which he was then and had been seriously 
afflicted with for seven or eight years, both nocturnally and diurnally, 
in all their many diversified and complicated forms, indicated by white, 
milky, sedimentary urine, and on straining at the stool, from constipa- 
tion. It should be distinctly understood by the reader, that the 
general cause for this direful malady, and which, by the way, is one 
of extreme prevalence among youth at the present day, in the United 
States, is by self-abuse, early excitement of the passions, and pre- 
mature development of the sexual function thereby ; and where the 
first cause has not been carried to a - severe extent, a judicious course 
of treatment will readily restore the victim, after he has at once aban- 
doned the pernicious habit, and subjected his passions to the moral 
control of the will. In this case, our patient had long since laid aside 
the habit which he supposed at first gave rise to this extensive drain 
upon his vitality by seminal losses, i Instead of any improvement or 
cessation, they were constantly gaining in frequency, and still more, 
sapping the stamina of his physical health. He had become extremely 
emaciated, weak, and languid, with almost entire inability to prosecute 
his studies, excepting at very short periods, at long intervals, and then 
was study or much mental reflection attended with intense disagree- 
able feelings of the head ; giddiness was so severe, that he often 
staggered about like one intoxicated, and when those symptoms were 
present in a less degree, they were still attended with a sense of confu- 
sion and insecurity, which rendered his walking and physical exercises 
serious efforts. He began to be troubled seriously with constant buzz- 
ing in the ears, with a great variety of noises, described sometimes 
as being like that produced by the boiling of a tea-kettle ; sometimes 
like the letting off of steam from a boiler; not rarely like the rumbling 
of thunder, and the acuteness of the sense of hearing was increased 
to a painful sensibility. His vision, however, became dim, and at times 
he would have turns threatening amaurosis or complete blindness — at 
others, fine webs seemed to be constantly before his eyes, so that 
every object wore a hazy aspect ; at other times, dark spots and 
brilliant flashes obstructed his vision. In addition to his headache 
and giddiness, he discovered an imperfection in the sense of touch. 
He found that on seizing objects his hands were not so thoroughly 
under his control as formerly ; his hands and arms would be often 



TAPE-WOKM. 



191 



seized with a tremor, and his legs were similarly affected, but to a less 
degree. At length this affection of the sense of touch and the gov- 
ernment of his hands became so great, that it was with difficulty he 
could hold objects firmly, unless he made a strong effort to concentrate 
his attention upon his actions. He had a great variety of unusual 
sensations about his body, all more or less referable to numbness ; his 
stomach occasionally rejected its contents, and he was frequently 
troubled with an uneasy sensation about the abdomen, and some- 
times with sharp, colicky pains. 

The train of morbid symptoms in this patient, or many of them, 
were so very different, and so aggravated too, to what we had usually 
met with in patients affected with a wasting of their vitality from the 
causes given, that we were convinced that he must be subject to Tape- 
worm. We accordingly made our prescription in this case agreeable 
to the supposition, and in less than one week after the patient began 



liktoijfiiigf 






mmtS^^ 






This cut represents the Taenia Solium, or Tape-worm, which was dislodged from a 
patient after being its subject for nine years, and having been reduced to the brink 
of the grave by its pernicious effects. 

using the remedies, he discharged large quantities of the worm, seve- 
ral feet in length, and continued to do so for more than a year, before 
we could succeed in dislodging the head, which we at length succeed- 
ed in doing. 

In the mean time, while the patient was under our care, as we have 
before mentioned, his general health and strength had become so much 
impaired, that he was obliged to abandon his studies, and devote his 
whole attention to himself and his medical treatment. He was reduced 
to a shadow ; indeed, the grave seemed to yawn for him, and conse- 
quently his despondency and dejectedness were exceedingly great ; but 



192 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

perseverance on onr part, together with strenuous exertions to revive 
his courage and resuscitate his prostrated energies, saved him, after 
a procrastinated suffering of nine long years, during which time lie 
was tortured not only with every imaginary evil, but real bodily afflic- 
tion, the anguish of which can be conceived only by those who have 
been placed in such a pitiable, deplorable condition, as to be made the 
tenement of such a strange and fearful occupant — a parasite of several 
hundred feet in length ! After its complete dislodgment, we sent our 
patient to the sea -side to receive the benefit of the sea-air, and the 
bathing in the salt water. He continued our energizing tonics, and 
returned in the fall, not only cured of these direful seminal emissions, 
but of this painful feeling of the head and ears, and the aberrations of 
his brain and nervous system had all vanished like the dew before the 
morning sun. He had become plump and robust, so much so, that we 
hardly recognized him. 

The cut represents, in part, this worm, which we were so fortunate 
as to remove, and which we retain in the cabinet of the Troy Lung 
and Hygienic Institute as a choice trophy of a victory gained by our 
new discovered remedies and improved system of treatment in the 
great field of verminiferous diseases. 

Note. — "Within a few years, science has discovered in several vegetables (some indi- 
genous to our own country, and others exotic, which are imported) a perfect antidote for 
Tape-worm. These remedies are kept constantly on hand at our Institution, prepared 
in a concentrated manner to be readily taken with facility, and without disturbance to 
the stomach, or derangement of the digestive organs, or involving the patient in any 
privation in his ordinary business or dietetics, neither do their operations produce debil- 
ity or physical prostration ; for their mode of action is, simply by their specific nature 
becoming obnoxious to the worm, dislodging its hold, and thereby expelling it from the 
alimentary canal. These medicines are made very portable in- their preparation, and 
can be forwarded to patients in all parts of the world by mail, and be as successfully 
used as though the patient was under our personal care. 



DISEASES OF THE HEART. 193 



Diseases of the Heart, Organic and Functional. 

We can not make the design of our work complete without inserting 
some few brief yet pertinent remarks upon a class of diseases which 
are so fast becoming of a national character, which are increasing an- 
nually in their number at a rapid rate, and the fatality of which, espe- 
cially when the affection has become really one of an organic or struc- 
tural nature, is most alarming, and attended with the most melancholy 
associations, from the sudden and unexpected manner in which death 
occurs. 

Affections and diseases of the heart are intimately associated with 
our specialty, making the organs of the chest, combining the heart, 
the lungs, and the respiratory organs, a subject of intense investiga- 
tion and study for years. We necessarily have had an extensive experi- 
ence in investigating the causes for, as well as opportunities of treat- 
ing many thousand cases ; indeed, not a day passes but what we are 
consulted, either by letter or personally, in greater or less numbers. 

As varied and as pervading as had been the causes for the prevalence 
of these diseases in the United States, we may now expect them to in- 
crease at a still more rapid rate, on account of the trying condition in 
which our country is placed from the intestinal, sanguinary wars which 
are now going on, occasioned by a disruption of the Union by a rebel- 
lious confederacy. It was a fact noticed by the most eminent of the 
faculty in Paris, that during the French Revolution heart diseases be- 
came increased to an astounding extent. Already do we see the truth 
of this law becoming manifest every day amid the painful struggle in 
which we are now engaged. 

The curious reader will wonder why this is the case. We answer, 
because a great and varied number of the diseases to which we are 
more or less subject, are what are termed nervous — manifested ex- 
ternally upon the nervous' system in their ultimate effects and painful 
consequences. So is this the case with heart diseases in a large ma- 
jority of instances, for the predisposing cause and foundation had 
already been laid previously in the pernicious habits so universally prac- 
13 



194: PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

tieed, especially by the male sex of the people of the United States. I 
refer now to the inordinate, excessive use of tobacco, both by smok- 
ing and chewing. So extensively does this figure in the cause for or- 
ganic diseases of the heart, that in our statistics, taken in a number of 
hundreds of cases which we have witnessed ourselves, or inquired into 
after having seen their deaths published, we found the cause, in eight 
cases out of every ten, to be traced to tobacco. 

But I wish my readers to understand the law that governs the cause 
of an organic disease of the heart, as it does in fact most diseases of 
other organs of the body — namely, that the heart can not be diseased 
in its structure (organically) without its first having become function- 
ally deranged or disturbed ; hence we meet with functional diseases of 
the heart in far greater numbers even than we meet with diseases of 
the lungs, as Consumption. This is a fact, however painful or melan- 
choly it may be to those who are interested. Why is all this? 
There can not be an effect' without its adequate cause. The cause of 
a nervous disturbance or an affection of the heart in one person may 
be one thing, in another a very different thing. In many cases there 
is a combination of causes to produce the results proportionate to 
the magnitude of the direful effect of the cause. For instance, in 
the male youth whom we are called upon'hourly and daily to pre- 
scribe for, we have met in many cases only an early use of tobacco, 
by smoking or chewing, or both combined, commenced as early as 
eight years of age. But we have combined with this another, one 
of the most paralyzing, death-destroying habits that an individual or 
a nation can be afflicted with. When we look calmly and dispassion- 
ately at these causes combined, taking into consideration the great 
disturbance of the nerve-centers of two of the great organs concerned 
in physical life ; that the nerves in both cases are stimulated and irri- 
tated to a most exalted state of sensibility ; taking into consideration, 
too, the law that governs the system, that when any organ or nerve, 
or set of nerves is over-stimulated, there will be a corresponding re- 
action and depression of that in connection with it; that during all 
this time these nerves are wrought upon and excited inordinately, 
and frequently, if we may so express it in right language, to an appall- 
ing sensibility — for it is so in the future effects — and that while this ifl 
going on, the nervo-vital fluids of the body are exhausted almost beyond 
science to calculate ; for a perpetual drain is not only instituted upon 
the system by exhalation or loss of the fluids and juices of the blood, 
but in addition, the ethereal fluid of life which exists in the func- 
tion of the brain and nervous system, imperceptible to the eye, that 
constitutes the spiritual part of our existence — take into consideration 



DISEASES OF THE HEART. 195 

with this that youth nowadays, the large majority of them, commence 
and are allowed by their inconsiderate parents the habit of using 
tobacco in one or other of its forms, very young, in many instances 
as early as six or eight years, and soon, for we interrogate such cases 
that come under our observation, and therefore we know. 

Well, what are the consequences of tobacco upon the nervous system 
— also what is tobacco? Tobacco is one of the most deadly and subtle 
narcotics ; even prussic acid itself is no more deadly, for prussic acid 
exists in nature in the kernel of the peach and the wild-cherry in a more 
attenuated form, and is far more harmless than tobacco. It is only in the 
concentrated form, when obtained by the chemist, that it becomes such 
a deadly poison. Just so is it with tobacco. The aborigines of Amer- 
ica knew this long before it was peopled to any extent by the Anglo- 
Saxon race ; for they used to dtp their arrows into the oil of tobacco, to 
insure the death of their victims ; and the experiments of Magendie and 
other physiologists of France and England have proved that one drop 
of the oil of tobacco put upon the tongue of a dog will kill it in three 
minutes. This has been proved time and again. Its effects will go 
on accumulating in the system, concentrating itself there until we have 
sufficient of it accumulated to poison the brain and nervous system, de- 
ranging it in its functions, and at length causing instantaneous death 
by organic disease of the heart, as we have it more immediately in the 
manner exemplified by Magendie, or in that of the aborigines, when dip- 
ping the points of their arrows in the oil or concentrated juice of 
tobacco. 

It requires nothing but dispassionate reason to perceive this ; but the 
reason why the inveterate users of tobacco will not see it, is just that 
which causes none to see the pernicious and injudicious effects of any 
habit that they are given to. Professor Way land says the moral facul- 
ties lose the power of discriminating when under the tyrannical control 
of habit. 

We have attempted, in hundreds of cases, and do almost daily labor 
sedulously with our patients, and try to convince them that all their 
disorders, and the disease, for instance, of the heart or of the sexual 
organs, have sprung from the use of tobacco; but have found it, in the 
majority of cases, to be a thankless task ; and we aver that this has 
been the case with other intelligent physicians who have pursued the 
same honorable, disinterested course that characterizes us — namely, the 
immortal John Abernethy for one. Even before his death, in his large 
experience, when tobacco was not so generally used as now, he 
avowed that in the large majority of diseases in males that he had 
prescribed for, tobacco figured extensively as their cause. 



196 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

Professor A. Smee, in a little work consisting of an oration delivered 
before the Hnnterian Society but a year or two since, which we have 
recently imported, narrates the same opposition and difficulty met with 
by himself, and illustrates the matter by the case of a man who had 
consulted him about a disturbance of the heart and nervous system ; 
and when he told him that the cause entirely was tobacco, all the ap- 
preciation he made of his valuable advice was this : How much do 
you charge for that little bit of advice ? then laid down the fee and 
departed in contempt. 

But it will not pay here to go into detail in regard to the conse- 
quences of tobacco upon the nervous system, nor the other baneful 
cause that we alluded to, frequently associated with it or independent 
of it, in figuring so largely in developing disturbance or disease of the 
heart ; we only wish to elicit, for the benefit of the reader, the manner 
in which the effects of our national conflict may operate to develop so 
rapidly disease of the heart. It is upon the principle that we laid 
down, that the nervous system is found morbidly poisoned and de- 
ranged and disturbed in its function. The heart is the central organ 
of circulation, and there concentrates the great vital energies to propel 
this force-pump, to sustain our machinery in life. The temperament of 
some is such that they have no power of balancing it ; hence they are 
given to an inordinate excitement ; their passions in one way or another 
are uncontrollable, which is a peculiar characteristic of our American 
people in business of every kind. They are led off by excitement under 
all circumstances ; they can not live without it ; they must carry it to 
its zenith when any thing new comes up, and the consequences are, 
upon those whose heart is already suffering from a functional disturb- 
ance so long, that the shock of excitement or its reaction is so great as 
to suspend the action of the heart at once. Many cases, on a post- 
mortem examination, discover a valvular thickening or ossification of 
the valves; others, hypertrophy, or enlargement of the heart, or 
oftener, atrophy, or wasting of the heart, known to victims of tobacco. 
In other cases softening of the heart is found, for the very reason that 
they have been so long under the influence of one baleful passion or 
another, as well as pernicious and poisonous habits, that the heart 
itself has not been nourished, for the stomach, and the gastric nerves 
have been paralyzed by their effects, and the stomach, in turn, has 
not been able to eliminate sufficient nutrition to nourish this vital organ. 
Hence flaccidity, or softening of the heart, and atrophy, or wasting of 
the heart, are two very common diseases, which figure so largely as 
the cause of sudden deaths. 

The above form some of the more prominent causes for both func- 



DISEASES OF THE HEART. 197 

tional and organic diseases of the heart. But there are many other 
diseases of the heart, both of a chronic and an acute nature, which are 
met with daily, and which, as the reader should know, must terminate 
fatally unless successfully treated in their early stage of development. 
For instance, we have acute inflammation of the heart-case — what is 
termed by the faculty pericarditis — meaning peri, around $■ cardium, 
the heart — the case around the heart. So we have acute inflamma- 
tion of the lining membranes of the auricles and ventricles of the heart 
— called also endocarditis, because it is internal. These acute inflam- 
mations of the heart take place in people liable to be subject to rheuma- 
tism, and for the most part it is really, as is now decided by the best 
modern authors to be, no other than a rheumatic inflammation of the 
heart ; hence rheumatic fever, or inflamed articular rheumatism as it 
is termed, acute rheumatism that affects the joints, becomes extremely 
liable to affect the heart, and deaths occur daily by a sudden change, 
or metastasis, of the disease, transferring it from a joint or an external 
part of the body to the heart. Such is the peculiar and almost mys- 
terious nature of rheumatism. It belongs to that ethereal part of the 
vital constitution that I have before alluded to, when instancing the 
vitality of the male exhausted constantly and excessively in a waste of 
nerve fluid, through an exalted, excited state of the nerves and functions 
of the sexual organs, so also of the heart. This strange, mysterious 
peculiarity forms or constitutes rheumatism. For the most part, rheu- 
matism exists in that subtle, ethereal nature of the physical system that 
traverses the nerves ; and although the exciting cause for its being de- 
veloped is generally found in the blood, yet its fatal, morbid effects are 
transmitted through the media of the nervous fluids. Hence we have 
another reason why so many die so very suddenly and unexpectedly 
with disease of the heart. They are walking about — they are engaged 
in their ordinary vocations, or in cheerful conversation — instantly they 
drop dead. In many of those instances, it is but the sudden transmis- 
sion of this subtle, mysterious disease which traverses the nerves and 
paralyzes the nerves of the heart. Many people who labor under func- 
tional or organic diseases of the heart, embody a rheumatic disposition 
of the blood, which keeps it up, and which centers at the heart-case. 
But from some cause, sudden exposure, or from check of perspiration, 
it leaves the external surface, and the part that was so stiff the moment 
before, that could not be moved without intense suffering, is all at 
once relieved and become's limber, and the heart is palpitating, or in- 
volved with extreme distress, pain or anxiety, producing the greatest 
fear, and giving rise to the greatest apprehension. Palpitation of the 
heart is the manner in which hundreds of cases are brought to the 



198 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

notice of the physician ; it is a disorder universally prevalent among 
youth, and arises from the disturbance of the nerves and functions of 
the heart, in debility either of the whole system, or great debility of 
certain nerves. For the most part, as daily met with, it is of a func- 
tional nature, and not yet become organic. 

The invalid reader will recollect the precaution that we have men- 
tioned at the opening of this section, that all organic diseases com- 
mence in a functional derangement. He should feel, therefore, the 
utmost solicitude to seek the most skillful, discriminating treatment of 
his case before organic disease ensues. It may be caused by indiges- 
tion, dyspepsia, over-eating, eating improperly, in improper quantities, 
or certain articles of food, derangement of the healthy secretions of 
the liver, or constipation of the bowels ; but, as a general thing, in the 
youth of both sexes, it has its seat in the sexual organs, through the 
disturbed function of their nerves leading to the heart, through the 
great sympathetic nerve, and by the great waste of vitality mentioned. 
But palpitation of the heart occurs in many from an impoverished, 
watery condition of the blood, the blood being destitute of iron and 
fibrine and the principles which give it momentum ; hence such females 
who have pallid countenance, pallid lips, or subject to dropsical effu- 
sions, irregularities of their catamenia, or monthly function, or suppres- 
sion of the same, are subject to extreme paroxysms of palpitation. 

The remedy for palpitation, disturbed function of the heart, in all 
such cases, must be found in removing the cause ; for when it is re- 
moved, in all cases that have not terminated in organic or structural 
disease, the effect will cease when the constitution is once invigorated. 
The treatment adopted and pursued by the Troy Lung and Hygienic 
Institute for diseases of the heart has been remarkably successful. 
We treat, on the average, some one or two thousand cases of heart 
diseases a year, and have not learned of one case of functional disease 
of the heart that we have prescribed for that has terminated fatally, 
but, on the contrary, have learned of their recovery, more or less, under 
our treatment, proportionate, of course, to the resources of their con- 
stitution for becoming again made vigorous and healthy. We admit 
that we find victims almost every day who have fallen a prey to their 
passions, as well as to errors of diet and of living combined, who are 
so far gone that it is beyond the power of medical art to restore them ; 
but even many such cases that we prescribed for at the time, without 
hope of saving them, being induced to do so by importunity on their 
or their friends' part, we have succeeded in saving them from that grave 
which seemed to yawn to receive them. 



LARYNGITIS. 199 



iinttttxAh . Section* 



Laryngitis, or Acute Inflammation of the Larynx. 

This disease, in its acute form, is most distressing and fatal in its 
character. There are but few who have been its subjects but what have 
been its victims. The mighty genius of this great Republic, at whose 
shrine every American bows with mingled reverence and gratitude — 
the great Washington — died of the disease. So also have many emi- 
nent physicians, among them Sir Macnamara Hays, Gilbert Blain, and 
Dr. David Pitcairn. 

Its attack is immediate and severe, involving the most distressing 
symptoms and the greatest anxiety. It follows immediately on ex- 
posure to cold ; commencing with great soreness of the throat, inabil- 
ity to swallow, with great difficulty of breathing ; so much so, that in 
a little time, the patient's life is threatened with suffocation, if not 
relieved by the aid of art. 

Like an acute attack of Catarrh, which affects the membranes of the 
nostrils, it inflames the membranes which line the larynx, together 
with the epiglottis, or valve of the larynx. This swelling extends 
rapidly, so much so, that the rim of the glottis closes, in many in- 
stances, and death results from suffocation. 

In this distressing local malady, also, the system of treatment 
adopted by the Allopathic School has been just as blind and uncer- 
tain as in the other diseases affecting the respiratory organs and the 
lungs — namely, by bleeding from the arm; reducing the patient's 
strength with nauseous doses of antimony and calomel, a blister, some- 
times, externally. So absurd is this practice in this disease, that, in 
nearly every case that we have on record, has their treatment been as 
unsuccessful as their prescriptions were unscientific. From the ac- 
count of the life of Washington, this great man was sacrificed in this 
w T ay. His biographer tells us, " that he was several times bled from 
the arm, and was greatly reduced in strength thereby, aside from the 
distressing nature of the inflammation, without any symptoms of im- 
provement whatever. Then counsel was called who recommended 
bleeding again, which Washington objected to, preferring to die in 



200 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

the condition lie was then in, than have the little remnant of his vital- 
ity drawn from the arm." 

For this painful and dangerous affection, the only treatment that can 
be adopted with any degree of success must be local. In those cases 
involving the distressing symptoms above detailed — where congestion, 
thickening of the membranes, comes on so quickly — we admit that 
local depletion from the rim of the larynx must be adopted by scarifi- 
cation, and this can only be done by a skillful physician who is situated 
near the patient ; for so emergent are the distressing effects, from the 
rapidity of the inflammation, that time will not allow, in many in- 
stances, the delay of sending to any distance for medical help. 

But the intelligent reader will see a vast difference between drawing 
the blood, by local scarification, from the congested membranes of the 
larynx, and its parts so affected, and drawing it from the general 
circulation at the arm. 

After relieving the congestion and inflammation, by skillful scarifica- 
tion, warm, medicated vapor, inhaled in the shape of steam, as 
warm as it can be inhaled, must be immediately adopted and per- 
sisted in, at regular intervals, until the inflammation is reduced. 

Such is the only rational treatment that can be adopted with any 
success for Acute Laryngitis. The strength of the patient should, at 
the same time, be sustained by beef-tea, and liquid nourishment fre- 
quently given. 

After the acute stage of the inflammation has been subdued by the 
means above described, warm medicated inhalation should then give 
place to the cool form of administering it, as in all other chronic stages 
of disease of the air-passages. 

Chronic Laryngitis. 

Chronic Laryngitis is an affection of a much more moderate charac- 
ter, supervening, like Bronchitis, upon ordinary attacks of colds or 
catarrhs, which affect the nostrils and the lining membranes of the 
throat at first, and if not cured immediately in the acute stage, extends 
downward into the larynx, producing extensive irritation, and, in many 
cases, inflammation of a low-grade nature. For the most part, it pro- 
duces symptoms of great dryness and tickling, a disposition to constant 
hawking or rasping, with frequent efforts to clear the throat. In many 
cases, much pain or soreness attends the upper part of the windpipe. 
This is frequently accompanied with great hoarseness, or alteration of 
the voice, and, in aggravated cases, complete loss of voice, aphonia. 
When aphonia, or loss of voice, takes place, it shows a direful state of 
the parts that are affected, either that the larynx is ulcerated, or the 



LARYNGITIS. 201 

nerves have become paralyzed, especially those nerves that extend to 
the chordae vocales, or the vibrating membranes situated in the larynx, 
which form the modulations of the voice. 

TBEATMENT. 

The treatment for Chronic Bronchitis, for the most part, must be 
local, and administered by cold, medicated, balsamic vapors. How- 
ever, where the inflammation has produced ulceration at the upper 
part of the throat, epiglottis, and the rim of the glottis — the entrance 
into the larynx-=— topical applications, in the shape of a proper throat- 
wash or gargle, become highly necessary as an adjuvant, and, in 
extreme cases, other more powerful yet modified preparations should 
be applied, directly under the eye of a skillful physician. We have 
frequently met with such aggravated cases, that it was necessary to 
inject a liquid into the larynx, with the laryngial shower-syringe; but 
the large majority of cases, if taken at any due season, can be cured 
by our cold system of balsamic inhalation. Many cases combine a 
disordered state of the digestive and assimilative organs and functions, 
which are the seat and primary cause for Chronic Laryngitis, and throat- 
diseases generally. Indeed, in our opinion, few people would be af- 
fected with catarrhal and throat-diseases, especially of such a malignant 
character as is met with every day, were it not for a disordered state 
of the stomach and alimentary canal. Hence, in our treatment we in- 
variably attend to the correction of the stomach, the disordered secre- 
tions of the liver, duodenum, and alimentary canal, giving such oxy- 
genated, restorative, corrective medicines, that combine the solvents 
necessary to purify the blood, and correct those morbid deposits which 
are found passing off from the kidneys in the urine. 



202 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 



IttwtMl Stttkkn. 



Diseases peculiar to Females, Scrofulous and Tubercular Affec- 
tions of the Womb and Sexual Organs of Females. 




Tantamount to the very rapid increase and wide-spread prevalence 
of scrofulous and tubercular diseases of the lungs, and other organs and 
functions of the body, which we have dwelt upon so extensively in 
detail, in their appropriate sections in this work, diseases have also 
arisen and become developed, in innumerable new forms of mani- 
festations, emanating in the female sex, from that wonderful and 
important organ or organs — the matrix and ovaries. To such an 
extent have these forms of disease made their appearance, with such 
rapidity of action and manifestation, and giving rise, at the same time, 
to so many anomalous and inscrutable features of physical, mental suf- 
fering, that they have bidden defiance to medical skill, and mocked 
every vain pretension to their cure on the part of the old-school prac- 
tice. 

Do you ask us the question, What means all this ? and why is it ? 
This certainly should be the first inquiry of the reader, whether male 
or female. Of course the female portion of our readers will feel an 
intense anxiety to know. Ought not the male to feel equal anxiety ? 
We contend he ought ; and even more so, inasmuch as the male has 
been created and appointed by God to be the instrument to convey the 
fructifying principle of life, which is to propagate himself in his own 
offspring, and to sustain the race from devastation and oblivion. But 
we fear, ah ! we know, this has not been the case ; hence, one of the 



DISEASES PECULIAR TO FEMALES. 203 

great causes of the early blighting of woman, in her childhood, where 
she is rendered, in the large majority of cases, perfectly incompetent 
and incapacitated to perform that wonderful and godlike function dele- 
gated to her nature. Let me ask you the question, How few out of 
the vast number who take upon themselves the privilege and condition 
of exercising the procreative functions, ever stop to inquire to know, 
and investigate the nature, the structure, and condition of life-force 
embodied and constituted in these organs that they so lavishly and 
prodigally use? Reader, you will see here at the head of this section 
a cut illustrating the uterus, the ovaries, and the vagina of the female. 
This cut represents these organs to the size of life in a virgin female at 
puberty. In the first place, stop and take into consideration the size, the 
smallness, or littleness of this one organ,* (the uterus,) capable, under 
healthy and right conditions, to be distended to that capacity of nour- 
ishing and developing a fetus of ten or twelve pounds, aside from its 
appendages of placenta, membranes, and fluids additional. Can you not 
see, then, that an organ so small as is here represented, and yet capable 
of such wonderful expansion, calculated by the divine Architect, in the 
nature of its structure and organism, to become the receptacle of, and 
perform the wonderful function, in nine months, of evolving and 
nourishng and perfecting the germ imparted in one drop of seminal 
fluid from the male, must of necessity involve a power of structure, 
magnificent, sublime, and wonderful, beyond even the human mind, 
though aided by the best powers of science, to perceive, to thoroughly 
fathom and understand, even under the most powerful microscope of 
modern scientific invention ? 

Professor Lee, of London, England, who has spent his best energies 
in life-long investigation of the female sexual organs and diseases per- 
taining thereto, occupied sixteen days in dissecting the nerves of the 
uterus under a most powerful microscope — and probably sixteen days 
more could have been successfully expended — without tracing out all 
the minute ramifications of the nerves distributed to this organ, so 
numerous are they. You will say, this is wonderful ! It is so. But 
do not forget that we are only talking about the nerves. And for what 
are these nerves ? They are to carry the vital forces both from the 
brain of the male and the female, in the cerebellum — the seat of ama- 
tiveness, and the upright lobes of the brain— the cerebrum, when you 
are concerned in the act of sexual gratification, or sexual communica- 
tion. 

Aside from the nerves, think of the uterus being a body of muscles, 
layer upon layer, beautifully overlaying each other transversely, 
diagonally, and longitudinally, as you see somewhat familiarly illus- 



204 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

tratcd in the ropes and net-work and covering that the balloonist has 
to sustain his balloon when inflated. 

Think, too, that this small uterus is wonderfully supplied with blood- 
vessels, arteries, and veins, for the purpose of diverting from the gen- 
eral circulation, when it is impregnated with embryonic life, the blood 
to carry on the new and important function of developing — what? 
A future Washington, perhaps, or a Madame de Stael ; or, on the 
contrary, a little, imbecile, scrofulous, deformed, puny offspring, to 
live, or rather drag out, a miserable existence of a few years here, 
and die prematurely, undeveloped into any full, dignified form of a 
male or female, or, perchance, in thousands of other instances, to be 
cast off in spontaneous uterine abortions. 

We have found it necessary to go into this anatomical, physiological 
structure of the organs, designed by Omnipotent Wisdom to receive 
the little germ of all human life — to nourish, develop, and evolve it 
into the external world for the high and sublime purpose designed for 
all intelligences beyond the sphere of our existence here — that you 
may have some idea of the seat and foundation of the innumerable 
number of diseases peculiar to the female sexual organs, that I have 
begun to talk about in this section. 

Pause with me one moment, both of you — -for we mean male and fe- 
male, as you are both aiike resjDonsible — and reflect. Turn your attention 
to the aborigines of the forest, and some of the different races of the 
civilized world, for instance, who live a more natural, rational life than 
mixed-up Yankees are wont to do. * The Indian mother, when in a 
state of pregnancy or gestation, will travel about on foot, carry great 
burdens, and perform wonderful journeys. She will be taken in labor 
on a journey; she will retire for a few minutes or an hour by the road- 
side, and give birth to her offspring, which she takes to a spring or 
rippling brook, and washes both it and herself, and after taking a little 
nourishment, perhaps, in an hour or two, is capable of proceeding on 
her journey. 

We have wonderful instances of the same kind in other nations 
which are civilized and educated, living consistently under organic 
laws, the women of which likewise suffer as little— the Germans, for 
instance. 

Even the negresses of our own Southern States, in many and many 
instances, are not confined from labors of the field, by giving birth 
to a child, more than a single day. Such we have, from our own 
practical knowledge, witnessed in our travels in the South. 

You have but to stop and contrast your own physical debility and 
imbecility with those races that we have named, to be aware of the 



DISEASES PECULIAE TO FEMALES. 205 

frailty of your own females. Throughout the whole United States, 
not one sound female in twenty — ah! perhaps not one in fifty — can be 
found. Even our misses and girls, in childhood and at puberty, are 
rarely found healthy, and capable of evolving a healthy function of 
these organs at the commencement ; much more to find them in an or- 
gauized, structural condition at that period when they take upon them- 
selves the awful responsibility of begetting offspring, or laudably 
propagating their species. But these organs are so incapacitated in 
their vital structure, so diseased and debilitated, that they become 
sterile after their marriage, which condition serves to embitter their 
prospects for life, as is betokened in the wailings that we are ap- 
prised of and made to know through the many channels by which 
we are consulted — ah ! their wailings come with every mail and every 
breeze. 

We are to ask the question, then, for you, in the first place : What 
are the causes for these vast number of diseases of the womb and 
female sexual organs, that I have begun to write about ? They are 
too numerous to mention in full detail in this section. We shall have, 
therefore, to refer you to some of their more fundamental causes : a 
peculiar scrofulous diathesis, or inherited condition from parentage, 
errors of progenitors — depicted in the section on Scrofula, wherein we 
have explained the depreciation of the parental germ laid in embryo 
in the uterus, in fetal life itself. It means this, and no more than this, 
that peculiar inherited scrofulous taint, from an exhausted state of 
vitality on the part of the parent sire, or that other form of Scrofula 
inherited by the mother, in which she lays the foundation for sponta- 
neous abortion in utero, from want of vitality and healthy organism in 
these parts constitutionally. Here, in the first place, are some of the 
fundamental causes, and the foundation laid back in the germ of life, 
for so many diseases of the female sexual organs, that meet the scru- 
tinizing eye of the scientific, discerning physician daily. 

But there are other causes, and they are potent and many, too, kept 
constantly in action to develop these diseases, in' so many new and 
diversified forms, that we shall speak of. To begin with some of the 
first causes, we shall mention that the sexual organs in the female are 
not fully and healthily developed, because the vital forces requisite to 
develop them soundly are diverted, during the period of childhood, by 
an inordinate pandering to their passions, which wastes the vital forces 
that would have been retained for the purpose of their development. 
Hence, when marriage takes place, with females, they are found un- 
healthily organized, and deficient in vital and nerve principle in these 



206 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

organs, just in so far as their whole physical system is found weak and 
debilitated, from the many errors of artificial life. 

lint we must carry our philosophy and facts still farther, and to 
prevent swelling this section or book too much, by repetition, will 
refer you back to this point that we have dwelt upon in preceding 
sections, wherein we have referred to the many causes for physical 
prostration, for nervous debility, impaired nutrition, deprivation of the 
vital forces in the blood, the many luxurious habits, and a thousand 
artificial excitements and overstrained and distorted modes of life, and 
not to say unsound, but insane methods of education pursued through- 
out the whole United States, and to such a reckless extent, that a well- 
balanced mind is rarely to be met with — by that we mean that the 
reckless modes of living in this country are so universal, that the 
faculties of the mind are entirely unbalanced. On this account, then, 
we have a most inglorious and ungodly abuse of the sexual passions, 
which figure in the cause of these diseases, of an untold number, 
assuming features and forms, in their external manifestations, through 
the perverted functions and diseases of the whole nervous system, so 
mysterious and new in their nature, and of so anomalous a character 
— forms for which there are no name, to use the language of the 
learned Dr. James Johnson, in regard to which, that if Sydenham him- 
self (the most distinguished among the moderns) was to rise from the 
grave, he would not be able to recognize them. 

Well, then, to advance and carry along the chain of my philosophy, 
and make it more clear to the comprehension of the reader, in regard 
to the cause and early development of so many diseases to which the 
female is subject, in the uterus and in the sexual organs, we shall 
name, that no sooner is marriage accomplished, than the work of ex- 
cessive sexual indulgence commences, and is carried to a most incon- 
ceivable extent. As we have said, in regard to the legitimate use and 
purposes of the sexual organs and functions in preceding sections, 
they are entirely lost sight of by the parties. Instead of exercising 
them prudently, under the discrimination of reason and the moral 
faculties, for the purposes — of what? — of fulfilling the godlike func- 
tion of propagating their species — they use them to pander to the 
gratification of their sexual desires, which are inflamed under this hot- 
house forcing system of education which they have been given to 
before, and which they now keep up by artificial excitants in living, in 
diet, in stimulation, and in every emotion awakened by a continued 
cultivation, by commingling and interchange of feeling and emotion, 
either instinctively or expressively. So, in the first years of married life, 
in the young at any rate, but little else is thought of through the day, 



DISEASES PECULIAR TO FEMALES. 207 

but to satiate the appetite at night. But it is not alone that the night is 
taken to satiate these passions, and excite the sexual organs to a most 
intensified and exalted state of induced excitability, but frequently the 
day is taken also ; for to a physician who has grown gray with years 
of experience, and who has been consulted for years, in thousands of 
instances of this class of diseases, he has unbosomed to him the most 
sacred secrets pertaining to their cause. We have, in many instances, 
known the young married female who was puny, sickly, and weakly 
when married — so much, so, that a little time afterward, owing to 
excessive pandering to, and excessive abuse of the sexual passions, 
was soon thrown into a decline. Her brutal husband was not satisfied 
under the cover and retirement of the night, but he would force her 
to lie down when he came to his meals, and have sexual gratification 
through the day also, to fan and increase the flame that was consuming 
her frail body, to afford a temporary pleasure to his sexual appe- 
tite alone. Ah ! what a godlike being is man, in the nineteenth cen- 
tury, boasting of all the privileges pertaining to our immortality, and 
the wonderful resources which the present age has developed for his 
sublime and godlike nature. Does he realize them as such ? Does he 
use them as such ? These are questions too important for your author 
to answer here; they must be left for the monitor in the breast 
of every person who may become impressed by the words here 
recorded. 

Man only excels the brute in a few faculties. He possesses in com- 
mon all the appetites of the brutes of the field, and he is an animal, 
and in common with all other animals, with the exception of his pow- 
erful reasoning and moral faculties which God has imparted to him, to 
be his compass, his guide, and to afford him a correct chart throughout 
the labyrinths, shoals, and quicksands that beset him through physical 
life. In our calmer and more reflecting moments, could we now select 
as a spectacle for an illustration of the point that we. are designing to 
explain in this section — namely, the cause for so many sexual diseases 
in females — we repeat, select, for one moment, the brutes and different 
tribes of animals in the fields and forests, and present them before us, 
and divest them of that governing principle over the sexual appetite 
and passion, the unerring law of instinct, and let them take their 
unchecked course in sexual gratification, as man does, we ask you again 
what a spectacle would be brought to human eyes ? Ah ! my friends, 
this same spectacle is brought to God's eyes every night, and not only 
every night, but every day. As Eugene Sue has said, in depicting 
Parisian life, to illustrate something of the same figure and features 
of human life in Paris, remove the roofs from the house-tops, and 



208 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION". 

look down for one hour, unobserved by them, and see what is going 
on within. . We need not go to Paris to witness this distortion of 
human lite and perversion of human nature, and the cause for the 
frailty of human existence, and the shortcomings, and the short-lived- 
ness of man. In the United States, man lives but to pander to his 
passions and his appetites. If the moral faculties are cultivated, they 
are not harmoniously so, only in isolated instances ; so that the balance 
of the faculties is unharmonized and thrown from its equilibrium, and 
calm reason, judicious judgment, and self-control, the possession of 
the full, godlike principles in a dignified, harmonious relation one to 
the other, are wanting, and only possessed in rare instances. 

But to return, after this brief digression, to the more conspicuous 
causes for uterine disease and diseases of the sexual organs in females. 
Let us dwell a little longer on the effect of sexual intercourse in devel- 
oping them. We have now under treatment a female patient suffering 
from a cancer of the uterus. She is but a little over forty years of 
age. She is living with her third husband. To use her own language, 
she says she married at the age of sixteen, and that her husband (she 
says nothing of herself, by the way) was of a very amorous tempera- 
ment, devoted almost exclusively to his passions at night, if not 
through the day ; so much so, that he had regularly as high as seven 
sexual intercourses with her a night, until, in a few years, he used 
himself up ; and she, in relation to him, stood like the two lovers in 
romance, who clung to each other with the fondest devotion, from the 
impulse of this passion, until their errors caused them to be both cast 
into prison together, when, in a little time, their appetites became so 
satiated, their vital forces so exhausted, that their excessive love for 
each other was turned into hatred. So with this patient of ours ; for 
she and her first husband separated ; and at that period of life when, 
in justice to herself, she should be marrying for the first time, she 
married again, to use her own words, for a home ; not being actuated 
by the correct motives that should govern every one, male or female, 
who enters that solemn institution — matrimony ; but she married for 
a home. Of course, she became alike the second time the subject of 
most inordinate passions ; so that her second husband, in a little time, 
used himself up, and was buried. Our patient was not satisfied with 
her experience thus far. At some thirty-three or four years of age 
she married again, and, to use her own words, she married — for a 
home, but found that her third husband was equally as amorous as the 
two preceding ones, only that his own abuses in earlier life before 
marriage had rendered him too incompetent to use her to that 
extent of physical exhaustion. Be it understood clearly and plainly, 



DISEASES PECULIAK TO FEMALES. 209 

in addition to the bearing of several children, she voluntarily confessed 
to us, that she had produced between thirty and forty abortions upon 
herself instrumentally, by running a tortuous instrument, blindly, her- 
self, (not understanding the anatomical, physiological structure of the 
organs,) into her own womb, to break up the commencing process and 
development of the germs of future offspring. Well, to make the 
point that we are laboring to convey clear, and to account for the 
causes of so many diseases in the female sexual organs, the awfully 
excessive amount of sexual intercourse, and producing between thirty 
and forty abortions on herself instrumentally, torturing and wound- 
ing the uterus so much, she has developed a cancer, which, when 
located in any other organ of the body, is sufficiently fatal and disgust- 
ing, but when developed in the uterus, this important organ that we 
have labored so hard to give you some little idea of in the forepart 
of this section, becomes a thousand-fold more disgusting and direful, 
inasmuch as science thus far affords no remedy to extirpate it, as has 
been done in other parts of the body, as instant death would attend the 
cutting off of so many important blood-vessels, nerves, and ligaments 
connecting it with the main body. Then, to remain here, united with 
the morbid secretions that take place from the progress of its ulcera- 
tion, becomes too horrid for the endurance of the patient, and too 
insupportable to those around, and can be only conceived by the actual 
perception of the physical senses. So she is left to drag out the little 
remnant of her short life in this melancholy way, and finally to suffer 
the most torturing of all deaths. 

It has been said, and truly, too, that man, of all others, is the most 
lecherous animal on the face of the globe. This, however beastly 
and uneuphonious it may sound to the human ear, is strictly true. 
Why have you lost sight of this great point and this question which 
we have once before answered in the preceding sections, which is this — 
namely, that God has made the lower animals subject to the unerring 
law of instinct in this appetite and passion ; whereas, in the benefi- 
cence of his wisdom, he has left it in man to be governed by reason, 
that godlike principle of our nature, which elevates us, or should ele- 
vate us above the brutes of the field, in that we have caused the 
vast number and classes of diseases which we are dwelling upon, 
and for which science does not afford a name, and rarely affords a balm 
of relief. 

It is not our design in this book to go into detail, or explain the why 
and the wherefore of the errors to remove the causes ; that comes in our 
special province, when consulted in regard to their cure, as the special 
14 



210 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

messenger who is endeavoring to fathom their cause as far as science 
and the progressive age will allow, to divine a cure. 

J J ut for one moment we will stop and notice what we consider 
some of the fundamental errors of society — in conjugal life, we mean — 
so far as they pertain to the cause of developing sexual diseases of 
females. I refer now to the almost universal custom, in the United 
States at least, of the husband and wife sleeping in one bed. Do you 
ask what I mean by this ? You are competent to answer the question, 
if you stop to reflect and realize what are the conditions, or what the 
effects, before you ask me the question. Be the question answered 
in the anticipation ; I will answer it again. What are the general conse- 
quences and attendant evils that surround the circumstance of their con- 
tinually sleeping together, especially when in the early ardor of incipient 
conjugal life ? Are they not directly to pander to the excitement of the 
animal propensities and passions ? It follows to a moral certainty, 
then, that so long as the conditions are such as to influence, excite, and 
unduly develop these passions, there will be an undue or inordinate 
indulgence to a most excessive degree ; so much so, that the vitality of 
both male and female is exhausted through the function of the sexual 
organs. The nervo-vital forces are thrown off" faster than they are gen- 
erated by the evolution of the digestive organs, or recuperated by rest 
of the brain and nervous system. The secretions made directly from 
the blood and other parts are carried off that way to a draining, 
exhausting extent. Aajain, this constant excitement to such an inten- 
sified extent of the sexual nerves and passions, carries off" with the 
vital forces the fluids of the blood, secreted by the glands of the 
organs under this intensified orgasm, produced by the act of coition 
and the brain, which are both involved together. 

The exhaustion of the nervo-vital forces and the vital fluids of the 
body weakens, debilitates, exhausts, and relaxes the sexual organs of 
the female as well as the male to an untold extent of perception to the 
observing eye of the experienced physician who is called upon to treat 
this class of diseases to that wonderful extent that we do, and we have 
had opportunities of witnessing their effects in hundreds of instances 
after death, under the scalpel and microscope, and in every form. When 
we have mentioned this, we named and explained, in the same para- 
graph, the vast difference between the women of the United States 
and the aborigines, the Germans, or the negresses of the South, w T ho 
-work in open fields. 

The difference is this, (and this difference explains the intellectual 
and moral condition of the various races likewise,) the law, I say, is 
tills — by law, I mean an emphatic, omnipotent law which emanates 



DISEASES PECULIAR TO FEMALES. 211 

from God, and pervades every thing — where the physical system is 
kept in healthy employment or exercise in the open air, the propensi- 
ties will be kept in a harmonious balance, and thereby prevent that 
inordinate preponderance or ascendency which obtains in the cerebel- 
lum, the organ and seat of amativeness, in more refined, luxuriant life, 
as with us, in which the animal passions are made to be developed just in 
proportion to the inordinate preponderance of the mind acting through 
the sexual organs. This is a law, I say. Every one can see in his 
reflection, that where the mind is made to concentrate upon one organ 
or faculty, that organ or faculty must, of necessity, be inordinately 
excited, and become diseased thereby, and the whole system be 
thrown out of its harmonious balance. This holds good both men- 
tally and physically, and explains why neither the mind nor the body, 
as a general thing, has a harmonious relation to each other, and a 
harmonious balance in the United States. 

But what are some of these mysterious diseases which now are so 
universally prevalent among females ? 

"We will enumerate among them prolapsus, or falling of the womb, 
from its normal position in the body ; chronic inflammation both of 
the vagina and the womb ; chronic inflammation and ulceration of the 
neck and mouth of the womb; dysmenorrhea, or painful menstruation, 
which implies, in many circumstances, different and opposite diseases 
or conditions of the body and the uterus. In many it implies an im- 
poverished state of the blood and rheumatic condition, and is, in fact, 
a rheumatism of the muscles of the womb, just precisely in the same 
manner that you have rheumatism at the heart-case, or in other parts 
of the body. It seizes the womb because that is the weakest organ? 
and takes its rise, as we have just related, in the morbid condition 
of the blood, and in physical and nervous debility. Coincident 
with this, we have, in the large majority of females, leucorrhcea, that 
excessive discharge of white fluid or matter which to the female is 
equally as debilitating as the corresponding glairy, mucous discharge 
is in the male, known as spermatorrhoea, or that excessive secretion 
which takes place in many from the seminal vessels or reservoirs, and 
is secreted therein, or at the prostate gland of the male, from the 
blood, by this morbid condition of excitability, irritability, and debil- 
ity of the parts. 

The philosophy of their cause in both is the same, only, we think, 
the virgin female, and females generally, by the way, are subject to 
more chronic inflammation and congestion in the mucous membranes 
and glands that line their organs, for the very reason of their errors of 
dress, of their being subject more to cold extremities and exposures 



212 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

of the surface of the body, repelling the blood, and consequently the 
temperature from it — driving the blood from it in a chilled condition 
to these organs, thereby causing them to take on these morbid dis- 
charges as well as diseased, morbid condition. Before we leave this 
part of the subject, we repeat, for your instruction, that this leucor- 
rhcea in the female, found as an every-day disease in nine cases out of 
ten, after she has passed her tenth year, is excessively debilitating and 
exhausting to the whole system, inasmuch as it is secreted directly 
from the blood, and is in fact, the albumen of the blood, which would 
otherwise, in a healthy condition of the system, go to form fibrine to 
nourish and build up the tissues of the body and nervous system, 
which are now wasting and decaying and going to — what ? Into that 
associate disease of Tubercular Consumption — Marasmus. But the 
old lady at my left who has listened to my arguments in relation to her 
daughter who sits on my right, who wears a pallid cast of countenance, 
whose lip has faded, the lilies and roses of whose cheeks are gone, 
and already giving place to care ; the ivory of her teeth has turned 
to ebony ; and yet she is but sixteen years of age ! — I say, she lifts 
her "specs" as I narrate that her daughter has these diseases and 
prolapsus to a wonderful extent, in so far as the uterus lies now 
pendent against the pelvic bones, and it is only because she has 
never had sexual intercourse with a man, to spread the vagina much, 
that it is kept from coming into the world, and forming what is termed 
in medical language, a procidentia, or protrusion through the pelvis. 
I say, again, when I explain this to her, she lifts her " specs " in won- 
derment, and says : " Why, doctor, it can not be ; she is not married ; 
she is only a girl ; she can not have falling of the womb, for only mar- 
ried women have falling of the womb." But, my dear lady, we would 
gladly respect your gray hairs and your age ; though age does not 
always imply knowledge, especially when the knowledge is based upon 
anatomy and the intricate structure of those delicate and highly organ- 
ized parts that lie out of your sight, which you have never investi. 
gated as we have. With all deference, then, to your gray hairs, we 
must tell you, you are mistaken, and that virgins, girls by the way, are 
subject, to a greater extent, to j^rolapsus, or falling of the womb, than 
married women generally. We remember that this was a great wonder- 
ment some twenty years ago, when I was yet young in my profession? 
and yet my experience then led me every day to discover that falling 
of the womb in virgins, this great relaxation and debility of the sexual 
organs, which was none other than the inherent scrofula that I have 
before explained, combined with an abuse of their passions in earlier 
life to give rise to them. I say, it was a great wonderment when I men- 



DISEASES PECULIAR TO FEMALES. 213 

tioned it frequently and I have often offended many a mother, and many 
an elderly lady. When I told them that their daughters had those dis- 
eases, they went away mad, incensed, because they were incapacitated 
to perceive the correctness of my discrimination, and instead of feeling 
grateful and thankful, they tried to, and in many instances did, do me an 
irreparable injury, because they could not appreciate the truth of my 
remarks, Ah ! truly may it be said that the science of medicine, when 
unshackled by creeds and prejudices, divested of bigotry and ignor- 
ance, left to reason and industry to be developed according as man- 
kind change their habits, and thereby pull upon themselves swift 
destruction by the errors of their ways, or their own hands, and de- 
velop these new diseases ; so it becomes a noble science, when left 
untrammeled and unshackled, to fathom their cause and show to the 
mass of mankind that will sit down inertly and hold themselves in 
ignorance of the laws of life, health, and hygiene, as to their conse 
quences. 

What can be said in relation to the cure of these numerous diseases 
of the female sexual organs, with which the unfortunate subjects suffer 
so much, and often without any sympathy ? We can not do justice 
either to the subject or ourself, without dwelling here upon the unfor- 
tunate situation which thousands of females are placed in, that suffer 
from diseases in the sexual organs, for this very reason— namely, that 
just in proportion to the highly-organized and complicated structure 
of these organs, which we have briefly endeavored to show — so high- 
ly supplied with nerves and blood-vessels, provided and endowed by 
the Creator for the wonderful function of developing the germ of hu_ 
man life, and sustaining the perpetuity of the race — just in proportion 
to the importance of these organs, are they made capable of sympa- 
thizing mysteriously through the nervous system with the seat of life, 
the mind, the soul, the emotions, and the brain. Now, as the 
uterus is so highly supplied with nerves, it is therefore supplied with 
those wonderful resources to develop or give rise to the most incom- 
prehensible and inscrutable suffering ; for the brain and nerve system 
of the matrix are united by the third and great sympathetic system of 
nerves which unites the two with the heart, the lungs, the spinal cord, 
the stomach, the alimentary canal, the liver, the spleen, and every 
other organ of the body. If you will stop for one moment, then, and 
comprehend the wonderful, complex nature of the system, and all 
the organs that are united, you will see why the uterus and the 
female sexual organs are in a morbid condition, and the nerves thereto 
excited to such an exalted sensibility, why she must suffer at times, es- 
pecially if the stomach and digestive organs are seriously deranged, the 



214 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

most inexpressible sensations of suffering, anguish, and pain, both phy- 
sically and mentally. Man, not comprehending this, not feeling it 
keenly in his own person and his own peculiar organism, is not capable 
in many instances — ah ! in the large majority of cases — of appreciat- 
ing, to any extent, her suffering. Hence, the unfortunate victim re- 
ceives but little sympathy, and instead thereof, in a great many 
instances, receives the most cruel neglect and ill-treatment. "We are 
consulted daily, and in the course of a year, in hundreds of cases, em- 
bodying these diseases on the part of the female, where in many 
instances they had applied to their old-fogy doctors in country places, 
who are no more capable, in their acquirements of investigating and 
fathoming the cause and extent of these diseases, than their ignorant 
husbands themselves. They had been dosed through the stomach 
with some allopathic, debilitating remedies, intended, perhaps, to reach 
a disease that is strictly local — on the mucous surface of the vagina, 
the neck and mouth of the womb ; or, in other instances, embodies a 
great debility and relaxation in the round ligaments and cords that 
support the womb to the body, producing prolapsus ; and the whole 
medication has been given through the stomach, and that with poisons 
and debilitating medicines, to reach these diseases local in their nature, 
and almost isolated, as it were, from the main body. The merest 
school-boy, if left to reason, could perceive that medicines, when put 
into the stomach, as a general thing, could not reach these local mal- 
adies. Hence, these patients have gone the rounds of a number of 
old-fogy, ignorant physicians, until their husbands have been taxed to 
pay considerable bills, and the wife, instead of being better, has been 
made worse, in so far that the stomach and digestive organs have been 
deranged in their healthy functions by the allopathic drugs which have 
been given them, and the nervous system in turn has become more 
debilitated and perverted in its healthy function, thereby embodying 
the mind of the patient in a thousand vagaries approaching to hypo- 
chondriasis, despondency, gloom, and forebodings of the most horrified 
and intensified kind. The more she is made to dwell upon her feelings 
or diseases, the more perverted and morbid becomes her mind and the 
state of the feeling. Hence, not unfrequently, the home which once 
was love and harmony has now been turned into an abode of wretch- 
edness, discord, and unhappiness. These patients come to us, then, 
second and third-handed, and in many instances they have been tam- 
pered with by six, eight, and ten physicians, and made worse in every 
instance. Their case now for the first time is scientifically investigated, 
each symptom carefully discriminated, the causes for these many ills 
and her long suffering are at length determined, demonstrated, and ex" 



DISEASES PECULIAR TO FEMALES. 



215 




plained to her in such a manner that she is now convinced there is a 
chance for her restoration and a cure. We explain how vague and in- 
consistent has been all her treatment, what mischief she has sustained 
therefrom ; how her nerve-forces have been paralyzed and depressed 
by the debilitating remedies and the derangement of the function of 
digestion, and that her treatment must be made local by the Ascend- 
ing Medicated Douche, which she will have in her own hands, and 

by the use of which she can 
apply the remedies locally 
in water adapted to suit 
the disease, and changed 
to suit the progress of the 
cure, and combat the dif- 
ferent stages and conditions 
that shall take place ; that 
it will all be in her own 
hands, and can be used si- 
lently, unobservedly, and, 
as a general thing, without 
the aid or knowledge of a 
Dr. Stone's Medicated Ascending Douche. second person ; that the 
remedies so given and otherwise applied by herself locally to the dis- 
eased and relaxed organs are calculated to arouse and equalize the 
nervous forces, to produce contractility and tone in the relaxed liga- 
ments of the womb, to give energy and power to the debilitated mu- 
cous membranes and glands of the vagina and the womb, to give 
vital force to the various secretions, and establish thereby a healthy 
monthly function ; that it embodies, in the same mode of treatment, re- 
lief from the painful menstruation; that it raises the prolapsed organ 
to its normal position, giving contractility to the vagina, to sustain it 
in its proper place ; that these remedies are combined and applied 
with such wonderful facility by herself; that it does not involve drugging 
or derangement of the healthy secretions of the stomach and digestive 
organs ; that it does not constipate the bowels ; that it does not sicken, 
nor prevent her from attending to the functions of her family or her 
home ; and instead of depriving her of exercise in the open air, she is 
enjoined, as a necessary part of the cure, to take a due amount of ex- 
ercise daily, when the Weather is suitable, in the open air, either pas- 
sively or actively ; that she is instructed, in regard to the electro-chem- 
ical or medicated bath, to equalize the nerve-forces throughout all the 
vital organs of the system, and to arouse a healthy function of the 



216 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

skin, and draw off the preponderance of congestion and morbid excite- 
ment from the internal organs in this wonderful nervous structure — 
that is, to restore its lost equilibrium of forces; and that our whole 
plan of treatment is in strict accordance and harmony with the laws 
of life and hygiene, and that the medical treatment is made subordin- 
ate to the very rigid laws of hygiene, which the patient is enjoined to 
observe, and that this induces a return of health, spirits, and buoyancy 
of mind, and banishes the morbid aberrations of the nervous system 
which she has so long suffered under, and which has given rise, at 
times, to her sour temperament and unpleasant moods, which have 
caused so many unhappy hours on the part of herself and husband. 
These are all scattered like dew before the morning sun, under scien- 
tific, enlightened methods of treatment, in harmony, we said, with 
what ? With the laws of life that govern the physical economy, and 
a discovery by us that the harmony of this diseased economy must be 
restored, in forbidding, as the grand stepping-stone to the success of 
our treatment, the further tampering of and pandering to these passions 
that have excited so exorbitantly the sexual nerves to generate these 
diseases; and we put a severe embargo, and enjoin a moral and intellect- 
ual injunction upon the husband, to make him know his place in relation 
to his wife, that he may not longer look upon her as a machine upon 
which to satiate his sexual appetite, but hereafter view her as a hand- 
maid created by an omnipotent God, and furnished with those organs, 
not for the gratification of his appetite alone, but to nurture and de- 
velop intelligences for the higher sphere of future angelic, seraphic life, 
and not as mere animals, groveling here through a few years, pander- 
ing to money and gold for the selfish purposes of pride and lust. 

But when she goes home and tells her husband what wonderful dis- 
coveries science has made in her case, and that there is yet a perfect 
chance for her restoration to health by the means above narrated, at a 
moderate tax, in nine cases out of every ten, she is snapped up, and 
told that he has paid money enough already, and there are plenty of 
doctors at home just as good as Dr. Stone — he is not going to pay 
money for his new-fangled modes of treatment. We give this in plain, 
common, every-day parlance, as it transpires between the parties, and 
which we are put in possession of; hence we give it in its plain, 
homely style, to enforce the lesson of human nature. What is that ? 
The want of charity — the want of harmony between not only man 
and man, but between a man and his wife ; and it depicts and conveys 
the most humiliating lesson that can be taught to mankind — namely 
the want of charity, of sympathy and kindness from man to a female, 
from the husband to the wife, after he has used her, satiated his 
passions upon her, and converted her into a sepulcher of disease. 



DISEASES PECULIAR TO FEMALES. 217 

We have given but a faint illustration in the above of the want of 
sympathy on the part of the husband for the wife. But there is an- 
other class of suffering invalids who endure all the untold horrors from 
these diseases, that are not married, which are brought upon them fre- 
quently by causes and habits which we need not here name ; so that 
when they find themselves prostrated and suffering in the inscrutable, 
undefinable manner that is depicted in the several letters that we have 
published in this volume, they have none to unbosom themselves to, 
for mortification, self-condemnation, pride, or shame, forbids them re- 
sorting to their parents, and unbosoming their suffering to them, for 
the very reason given in some of those letters. They are ashamed to 
confess to their parents the causes for these untold horrors and physi- 
cal miseries in their own pandering to their passions. They will con- 
fess to their physician, as the priest of the holy flame of life, what they 
w r ill not confess to father or mother. To such an extent does this 
feeling of shame, mortification, and self-condemnation pervade most 
of this class of sufferers, that we have known many of them carry the 
cause to their death-beds, and into eternity — even on the bed of death 
denying, time and again, that such was the cause of their suffering. 
We say emphatically that we have known many and many such. We 
have known many other instances where we have been made the con- 
fident in regard to the cause of their premature decay and early dis- 
solution, so mournful that we have carried the secret confided to our 
bosom and trust, until circumstances called it forth by the melancholy 
importunity on the part of the parents and friends in many instances ; 
and then even when death had shrouded the cold form of the victim 
in the sepulcher, we were impugned for conveying that trust to 
them, for the very reason that they had not humility of soul to ac- 
knowledge when they had conceived that their children could be made 
the recipient or subject to the same great law of the passions and 
human frailties that they themselves were subject to in common with 
all others. My God ! we wish the great book of human conduct could 
for a few hours be unfolded to human eyes, and they could be made to 
read it and the lessons of perverted human nature as we have been 
made to read them, and are called to witness the sad spectacles of every 
day of our professional life, they would stand aghast — ah ! they would 
tremble and reel under the awful shock, and, in more than one in- 
stance, the mind would ( totter on its throne, and the heart cease its 
wonted throbbing, at the awful recitals. 

But before we close, let us divulge, for the benefit of the present and 
future generations, the great stumbling-block in the way of possessing 
that light and knowledge of the innumerable causes for the many 



218 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

diseases which consign thousands and thousands annually in the Uni- 
ted States not only to an untimely, but to an ignominious grave. 
What is it ? It is expressed in a few brief words : want of humility of 
soul. When man arises in the dignity of his nature, and develops that 
godlike principle within him, which is now latent, and as impenetrable 
as a mass of lead — when he shall develop that which, by the grace of 
God, was conveyed two thousand years ago by Jesus Christ himself, 
and taught in those few words that it was the grace of God and hu- 
mility of soul that made us like him — it will put us meekly, calmly, and 
silently in possession of that key which shall unlock the gates of know- 
ledge, and let the prisoner go free, and lead to the fountain of salva- 
tion which shall save both body and soul. 

From 3fiss Nancy A. Wallace, Millbridge, Me. 

March 2d, 1862. 

Dear Sir : I offer you my most heartfelt thanks for the restoration of my 
sister, Elvira, who came under your care in August, 1861. She was then a 
great sufferer. She could not have lived over a month longer. We had several 
doctors ; but they could not help her any. We had given up all hopes of her 
recovery. Whilst reading the Machias Republican, I saw your card, which gave 
me new courage. I wrote you at once, stating the symptoms and their melan- 
choly cause — namely, that her mind was wandering and almost gone ; she 
frequently expressed herself tired of life ; had great aversion of society, and was 
very retiring ; got but little rest, and would walk the room most of the time ; 
was extremely restless ; had dyspepsia of the worst kind, her bowels being so 
constipated that she had no action without using purgatives. The secretion of 
her urine was extremely scanty, and thick and sedimentary. Her feet and 
ankles were very badly swollen ; and that she was a mere skeleton ; that she 
had groaned steadily for about six months, walking the floor all that time, and 
would neither see nor take notice of any one. After I received your encouraging 
letter, saying that you thought you could benefit her, we immediately forwarded 
the means and had her placed under your care; and it was but a little time after- 
ward that her symptoms began to improve, so much so, that the more aggravated 
ones disappeared in four months' time ; and now she is in perfect health. 

My father and mother, though we have none of us ever seen you, think there 
is no physician like you. We have recommended to you many of our neighbors, 
some of whom are under your treatment, with very encouraging success. I can 
recommend you conscientiously to all similarly afflicted and troubled with dis- 
ease. With the utmost confidence in your skill, 

I remain most truly yours, 

To Dr. A. Stone. Nancy A. Wallace. 

Pbacttcal Remarks. — We treat many hundreds, if not some thou- 
sands of patients annually, by letter and express, and as a general 
thing, with perfect success and satisfaction. 



DISEASES PECULIAR TO FEMALES. 219 

The case of Miss Wallace, just narrated by her sister, who corre- 
sponded with us and gave us her history and symptoms, shows that it 
was one of a most aggravated and seemingly hopeless character, in 
so far as her whole constitution and nervous system were sadly shat- 
tered and debilitated ; so much so, that the brain, the seat of reason, 
had become invaded, and she was a monomaniac. To encourage 
others similarly situated at a great distance from our Institution, that 
they have a great chance of restoration by our system of treatment, 
which is rendered so perfect, even when they are very distant from 
us, by our methods of interrogation, analysis, etc., which elicit every 
latent and obscure feature of their case so scientifically that we can 
send the treatment to all parts of the world, as it were, and cure our 
patients, comparatively with the same facility and success as though 
they were with us at the Institution. We mean this with qualifica- 
tions — that is, where there is a decision and determination adopted on 
the part of the patient or the friends of the patient to carry into rigid 
observance our very explicit and thorough system of hygiene, along 
w T ith our scientifically discriminating methods of medical treatment. 
Be it understood, further, for the encouragement of those depressed 
and desponding invalids who may read the history of this case, situated 
hundreds of miles from us, that there may be as great a chance to 
restore them to the sweets of life and the integrity of reason, as in the 
case of Miss Wallace. We say to you then, conscientiously, actuated 
by the inherent desire of our nature to do good, and carry the balm of 
health and consolation to every afflicted heart, make up your minds, 
therefore, to write us at once ; state your case — it matters not in how 
homely, or plain, or disconnected style ; and if not able to do it your- 
self, get some neighbor or friend to do so, and we will give you our 
conscientious opinion, for we disclaim any mercenary motives, under 
such circumstances, of holding out any encouragement to such for the 
sake of simply getting their money, when our judgment is convinced 
that they can not realize a cure. 

We permit all our patients to hold constant and unremitted corre- 
spondence with us ; in fact, we desire them to do so while under treat- 
ment, so that we may be enabled to prosecute our plans to the best 
results. 

Since the recovery of Miss Elvira Wallace, we have received the 
following voluntary letter and testimonial from her : 

Millbridge, Me., January 9th, 1862. 

Dear Sir : It is with pleasure that I now address you, to inform you that 

your medicines and treatment have had the desired effect, and that I am now in 

good health, which, had it not been for your kindness and skillful treatment, I 

have reason to believe I should never have enjoyed, but would have been in my 



220 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

grave ere this, and, therefore, I can not feel easy until I endeavor to return 

thanks to you for your benevolence. 

I wish you all good success — please accept from your patient, 

To A. Stone, M.D. Elvira Wallace. 

Cambridge, Wash. Co., N. Y., November 18th, 1862. 
Dr. Stone : Dear Sir : I shall ever hold you in grateful remembrance for the 
great cure you have done for me, in my restoration to health after suffering many 
years from a most aggravated internal malady, which threatened my life, and 
prostrated my health and energies. After many unsuccessful efforts to be cured 
by others, you were the only one found sufficiently skillful to restore me. I have 
been written to by many ladies, similarly affected, inquiring after the success 
of your treatment, and I have replied to them recommending your treatment to 
them. I hope you may be as successful in treating them as you have been me. 
You are at liberty to refer any female suffering with diseases peculiar to our sex 
which you treat, to me. Yours truly, Jane M. Skellie. 

Note. — The case of Mrs. Skellie was one of extensive ulceration of the neck and mouth 
of the womb, of some ten or twelve years' standing. The ulceration had extended into 
the cavity of the uterus and the ovaries, in its morbid irritation. She had been treated 
many times by several allopathic physicians in a most uncertain manner, by giving 
medicines into the stomach, making their prescriptions without any ocular inspection or 
true diagnosis of the local diseased condition ; hence their practice was as empirical as it 
was unsuccessful. But when she consulted us at our Institution, some four years since, 
a very discriminating examination was made, and the ulcerated and diseased parts pro- 
perly and judiciously brought to view, to know the extent of the disease and its mischief. 
The treatment adopted by us was entirely local, mainly by the Ascending Medicated 
Douche, partial electro-medicated baths, together with electricity, for the purpose of 
rousing the vital forces and overcoming the local congestion. It was but a few weeks 
before a rapid improvement commenced, which progressed onward, without interruption, 
to a perfect cure in three months from the time she commenced. 

The following letter from Mrs. J. Goodrich, Meriden, Ct., was 
written to Miss Burnham, a lady who afterward became our patient, 
but who, before putting herself under our care, was solicitous of having 
some testimony from a patient that we had cured ; hence the letter is 
so addressed. We take the liberty of here publishing it for the benefit 
of suffering females. It was handed to us by Miss Burnham. 

West-Meriden, August 30th, 1855. 

Miss Burnham : I received a note from you last evening, and take the earliest 
opportunity to answer it. As regards the treatment of Dr. Stone in cases simi- 
lar to my own, I think he understands the disease better than any one that I 
have ever employed. He has certainly done more for me, in the short time that I 
have used his remedies, than had been done for me the past two years. When 
Dr. Stone first commenced the treatment of my case, I was unable to sit up but a 
short time ; now I am able to attend to my domestic duties, and think I should 
have been almost well if I had not a very heavy babe to take care of. 

I think I can recommend him to you. Hoping that you may be much benefit- 
ed by his course of treatment, is the wish of J. Goodrich. 



DISEASES PECULIAR TO FEMALES. 221 

CASE. 

Case of Amanda B. Green, JDanby, Vermont ; showing the most striking re- 
sults of our system of medicated inhalation, combined with our invigorating 
remedies, in restoring her to good health, when in the last stages of Tuber- 
cular Consumption. 

In November 1860, we were consulted, by letter, by the friends of Miss 
Green, respecting the probability of being benefited by our treatment. They 
gave a lengthy description of her case. Her age was twenty-seven ; inherited 
on the part of both father and mother a predisposition to Tubercular Consump- 
tion, with which her father had died some years previous, and at this time, her 
mother was also prostrated with bleeding of the lungs. 

Miss Green was confined to her bed, and under the care of an Allopathic phy- 
sician, who continued to prescribe his remedies, although he considered her case 
incurable. Query : "What can be the motive of these old-fogy Allopathic doc- 
tors, in continuing to visit, and feed the false hopes of such patients, when they 
secretly to their friends pronounce their cases perfectly incurable ? This was 
the case with Miss Green's physician, at any rate, at the time they wrote me. 

She being confined to her bed from extreme exhaustion and frequent raising 
of blood, of course duty compelled me to give a very cautious opinion ; for it 
was after she had been in the third stage of both Tubercular as well as Bron- 
chial Consumption. She had hectic fever, night-sweats, cold chills, loss of ap- 
petite, constant cough, and many of the other alarming features which accom- 
pany its progress in females : hence the necessity of great caution in offering 
much encouragement. "We, however, advised that they had better try a month's 
course of our treatment, at any rate, and we would guarantee that it would 
certainly do her no harm, if the case had advanced so far that it could do her 
no good. 

Upon this cautious prognosis, they were induced to put her under our care, 
by letter, as they were anxious to do every thing for her that money and kind 
efforts of friends could do. 

We forwarded her inhaling vapors, and also restorative tonics, with ample 
written and printed directions for their use, together with general hygiene — 
recommending a generous, nutritious diet, frequent bathing in alcohol and 
water, the great necessity of pure air, frequent ventilation of her room, and 
other very definite methods to restore her strength. So rapid did she im- 
prove under our treatment, that in less than four weeks she was able to write 
herself to us. But the improvement did not stop here ; it went on rapidly 
beyond all expectation of ours or her friends, until she was able to ride out in 
six or seven weeks, and in nine weeks from the time that she came under our 
treatment, she was able to ride seventy miles in the cars, on a cold winter's day 
and see us personally. She remained under our personal treatment for a week 
only, and returned home that winter. She has been, more or less, under the 
influence of some of our remedies ever since. 

The succeeding summer she was able to be about, and do considerable work, 
though she was prostrated from the warm weather, as invalids generally are, 



222 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

and lost her appetite for a while, yet she writes that, on obtaining and using 
our " Oxygenated Tonic Bitters," they acted like a charm to restore her appe- 
tite and give new vigor and energy to her constitution, so that she is, not only 
comfortable, but able to do much labor, and be about continually. It is but a 
few days since we received this last letter from her. 

Here, then, is another practical illustration that Tubercular Consumption — 
even when complicated with bleeding from the lungs, and other derangements 
in the various vital functions of the body — may be cured, the patient's life pro- 
longed for many years, and also be enabled to enjoy, to a degree at least, the 
comforts and blessings of health, as well as the social blessings of society. If tu- 
bercularization is so great, that it could not be dispersed before the patient comes 
under our care, as in this case, they may be arrested in their progress, and kept 
from softening or ulcerating by the treatment, and the patient's life prolonged 
for many years. This certainly is a desirable object, if every patient looks to 
the real motive of human health and life, as we do, to be nourished and sus- 
tained in the physical body as God intended, a certain length of time, for devel- 
oping the higher purposes of the mind, and fitting it for immortality. 

Note. — Miss Amanda E. Green resides in Danby, Vt., where she can be written to 
and the above facts corroborated, by any person who feels interested to inquire. 

CASE. 

Dr. Andrew Stone: Schenectady, April 1st, 1862. 

Dear Sir : I have for a number of years been engaged in study, but my con- 
stitution, originally extremely strong, did not seem to be much affected by a 
sedentary and intellectual life until last year, when my digestive organs began 
to show signs of being impaired. I had indeed heard much of the tendency to 
indigestion among men confined to mental employments, on account of the 
draft made by the brain on the nervous energies at the expense of the stomach, 
and the nutritive organs, and of late I have been surprised to find how few men 
of sedentary life are free from difficulties of this character. But, as I said be. 
fore, I experienced but little trouble in this respect until last year. I began then 
to be troubled with weakness and languor, and a gnawing sensation in my stomach. 
I was troubled greatly with dizziness and irregularity in the action of the heart. 
My breathing became short and hurried, and only the ascent of a hill or a flight of 
stairs almost put me out of breath. Moreover, my circulation became imperfect 
and much reduced, and by consequence my extremities were cold very nearly 
the whole time. You will conclude, of course, that I was low-spirited and full of 
all manner of dreadful forebodings, and that I found it almost impossible to 
continue my studies. I tried various experiments in diet and medicine, but 
still I accomplished nothing practically. At last I was recommended to try your 
treatment. I visited you, and you unfolded your system, and I examined it care- 
fully and subjected myself to it. I need not detail to you the history of the 
case, other than to say that I found myself gradually gaining strength and spirits 
and my food more thoroughly digested, and by consequence my blood better and 
my whole system thoroughly renovated. Nearly all my uncomfortable expe- 



DISEASES PECULIAK TO FEMALES. 223 

riences passed away, and I feel like another man. All I have to say is, that I 
think your system of treatment very simple and extremely philosophical, 
founded upon common-sense and hygienic laws. So far as I can judge, your 
superiority seems to consist in subordinating the action of medicine to exercise 
and diet, and thus establish a sure foundation and a thorough cure. 

Hoping that you will be greatly prospered in all your efforts in this direction, 

I remain yours etc., 

WlLLLIAM C. MACEY, 

Professor of Greek Language, Union College, Schenectady, N, Y. 

Copy of a Letter from Mr. Charles Martin, Esq., Professor of Vocal Music, and 

now a successful Teacher at the Hudson River Institute, ClaveracTc, JST. Y. 

Frelighsburgh, C. E. 

My Dear Doctor : Your very acceptable letter of September twenty-seventh 
came duly at hand several days since, but limited time has prevented my an- 
swering it sooner, and even now I can not express the many thoughts which its 
interesting contents suggest to my mind. But, first of all, allow me, sir, to 
express my most hearty thanks for the interest you have manifested in the 
restoration of my health, and last, but not least, your kind offer to send me more 
inhaling vapors and medicines if I should need them. At present I am so 
nearly cured that I do not seem to be in need of any other, though I should like 
another bottle of your Pulmonary Tonic, which I think was very beneficial to 
me, and of which I am out. 

My health has not been so good for three or four years as at present ; I have 
an excellent appetite, and inhaling your medicated vapors has done wonders for 
my throat, which, at present, scarcely troubles me at all in comparison with the 
past. I am very much stronger, and am laboring quite hard, having some 
twelve or thirteen music-pupils who require two lessons a week, (five of them 
vocal students,) and they being scattered, oblige me to ride six or eight miles a 
day, so I think you may safely conclude that one of your patients at least is on 
the gain. I intend to follow up your treatment as faithfully as possible. I am 
endeavoring now to influence two other invalids of my acquaintance to adopt 
your system. Respectfully, Charles Martin. 

Andrew Stone, M.D. 

PRACTICAL REMARKS. 
Mr. Martin, since the above time, from unremitting labor and ex- 
cessive taxation of his vocal organs, together with taking colds, has 
had three or four renewed attacks of acute bronchitis, two of which 
seriously involved the lungs in congestion. He has put himself under 
our treatment each time, with the same happy results and relief by in- 
haling our medicated vapors. The last attack, about two months since, 
(the winter of 1862,) was so severe that it confined him to his room, 
and his suffering was so great that he was induced to telegraph to us 
for a prescription to relieve him of the excruciating suffering that he 



22-i PULMONARY CONSUMPTION-. 

was laboring under. Since then he has written us further, expressing 
the same confidence from the continued relief derived from the use of 
our system of medicated inhalation. In the same letter, Mr. Martin 
requests us to refer any inquiry to him, as to the beneficial effects of 
our system of treatment for diseases of the throat and lungs. 

Dk. Andrew Stone : Burton, Ohio, Dec. 21, 1861. 

Dear Sir : It is with pleasure that I again say that I am enjoying the best 
health that I have had, and think it is through your skillful treatment and ad- 
vice, and I know that no other system of medication but your very rational 
mode of administering medicated inhalation, combined with your invigorating 
oxygenated tonics, could have done for me what yours has done, and I recom- 
mend it most heartily, which I have done already to many invalids that I am 
acquainted with. I am anxious that you may use this for the benefit of suf- 
fering invalids. Yours truly, C. A. Hawthorne. 

Sandusky City, Ohio, May 5th, 1861. 

My Dear Doctor : I have been greatly benefited by the use of your inhal- 
ing vapors and your oxygenated tonics. I am slowly but gradually recovering 
my health, for which if I did not thank you and express my heartfelt gratitude 
toward you I would do disrespect to my feelings. E. W. Alexander. 

To Dr. A. Stone. 

PRACTICAL REMARKS. 
The case of Mr. Alexander embodies one of a most aggravated and 
complicated nature of Marasmus, or wasting away of the whole mus- 
cular tissues and nerves of the body, involving the throat, bronchial 
tubes, and the lungs in severe chronic inflammation and much ulcer- 
ation, and was attended with severe irritation in the spinal nerves, oc- 
casioning great fatigue in sitting long in one position, or on taking 
much active exercise. He was greatly debilitated ; his digestive 
organs were seriously deranged, so much so, when he first visited us 
in October, the preceding year, that but little of the food taken into 
his stomach was assimilated into blood or nourishment. His diseases 
had far advanced and threatened a fatal issue. But our patient, using 
much reflection, being of an intellectual turn of mind and tenaciously 
desirous of life and health, was rigid in adopting our advice and carry- 
ing out our principles of treatment and hygiene, which has been 
crowned with success in restoring him to health. 

Dr. Stone : Dear Sir : I hereby inclose you the amount that is due you. 
Permit me to say that I am highly gratified at the benefit your treatment by 
medication has had upon me. "When coming under your care, some year ago and 
upwards, I had a constant cough, soreness in the throat and throughout the re- 
spiratory organs, my breath was bad, and I was troubled, more or less, with 



DISEASES PECULIAE TO FEMALES. 225 

pains in the chest. These symptoms have all left on prosecuting your treatment, 
and I now consider myself well. The Balm Vapor has been remarkably benefi- 
cial to my lungs and removed the severe cough. So, also, have the Tonic Vapors 
been of great benefit. I recommend your system of cold medicated inhalation 
for affections of the chest and lungs to all who are similarly afflicted. 
With many thanks for your kindness, I am, sir, 

Yours, very respectfully, Thos. H. Clark, 

Overseer of the House of Refuge, Randall's Island, Harlem, N. Y. 

Case of Tubercular Consumption and Bleeding from the Lungs cured by the 

inhaling of Dr. Stone's Cool Medicated Vapors. 

From Mrs. Harriet Coolidge. 

My Dear Doctor : Having received the greatest benefit and the most satis- 
factory results in my own person from your treatment, I am quite anxious to 
make it known for the benefit of others. 

In the month of June, 1858, I was attacked with a hemorrhage from the left 
lung, which weakened my voice and prostrated me very much for the time. I 
had another attack in June following. During this time I had no other treat- 
ment than what I could obtain here, and so remained in a very delicate condi- 
tion until in April, 1860, when I was again taken down with a hemorrhage from 
the lungs. I then tried the remedies that I had formerly used, recommended 
by those whom I consulted in the place where I resided, but without benefit. 
At this time I was very much reduced ; my lungs were very sore, and I experi- 
enced more pain through them than I had ever done before. I was troubled 
with a hacking cough ; my symptoms were all bad, and of a consumptive char- 
acter ; my extremities were constantly cold, and were so bloodless that no 
amount of friction would get up any warmth. I had suffered, however, from 
cold extremities from my childhood up, indicating a negative condition of my 
nervous system and want of healthy circulation. 

Perceiving now that my condition was a very critical and dangerous one, I 
was aware that if I could not obtain some skillful aid, that I should in all pro- 
bability run through a rapid decline. Mr. Walker, of our town, and several 
others, I learned, who had been similarly situated, had consulted Dr. Stone, of 
the Troy Lung and Hygienic Institute, and had recovered their health ; I was 
induced, therefore, first to write to the Doctor and state my case. The reply was 
so encouraging that I undertook a journey with my brother to Troy, to consult 
him personally. The Doctor examined my chest and my case very critically, 
tested my vital capacity on his Pulmometer, and conscientiously told me that 
my lungs in part were filled with tubercles, but that ulceration had not ta.ken 
place to any great extent, and that if I would adopt his system of medicated in- 
halation, use his vital tonics, and live rigidly to the Hygienic Rules that he 
should put me under, there would be a fair chance of my recovery. I adopted 
his plan of treatment, put myself under his care for three months, and, at the 
end of that time, I was almost a new person ; my bleeding had entirely stopped, 
my cough was gone ; I improved greatly in strength and appetite. 

Harriet Coolidge, 

March 1, 1862. l5 Sherburne, Vt. 



22G PULMONAKY CONSUMPTION. 

New-Orleans, July 24, 18 GO. 

Dr. Andrew Stone : Dear Sir : My object is to obtain your medical treat- 
ment and advice for my wife. Her case is this : some three years ago, she 
got a very bad cold, which terminated in a pleurisy. She then raised some 
blood. From that attack she recovered, under the treatment of our family phy- 
sician. Perhaps five or six months afterwards, she was taken with a kind of 
irritation in the lower part of the throat, which caused a sharp and sudden 
cough. I applied again to our family physician, who pronounced it laryngitis, 
and afterwards, with counsel, pronounced her case to be one of bronchitis and 
laryngitis too. Her cough has not subsided under their treatment, but has in- 
creased, and terminated in hoarseness. She is very delicate, and takes cold very 
easy on exposure to the air. Lately her difficulty has increased very much, so 
that her throat is so sore that it troubles her about eating or drinking, and she 
has again expectorated blood. She is thirty-five years of age, was born in the 
West-Indies, from whence we came to this place. Her mother died with in- 
flammation of the lungs. All treatment that she has received thus far has been 
unavailing. Having heard of the remarkable cures effected by you, I determined 
to apply to you for assistance in her case, and hope that you will prescribe for 
her. Had my business been of another nature, I should have gone with her to 
Troy to see you personally ; but I can not, for I am a bookkeeper in a large 
house in this city, and am obliged to be on the spot. 

I beg to refer you to the following houses in New- York City, who know both 
me well and the firm I am with. 

Please answer as soon as you possibly can, with prescription as to treatment 
and diet. Do not be afraid of being lengthy. Particularize every thing to ob- 
serve—exercise, etc. Send by express, and draw upon me accordingly. 

Yours, etc., H. Lauzingham. 

New-Orleans, August 20, 1860. 

Dr. Andrew Stone: Dear Sir: On the afternoon of Sunday, the seven- 
teenth instant, your box, containing the medical treatment for my wife, was 
brought to my house. She commenced the treatment, as per prescription, on 
the nineteenth, and has felt well after inhaling the tonic vapor. Several times, 
when she has been troubled with cough and irritation of the throat, she has 
united the Balm Vapor, and taken the Bronchial Emulsion, which have relieved 
her cough and subdued the irritation in her throat measurably. 

I have given your cards and circulars to many of my acquaintances who are 
sick, and they intend to write you for medicines. I assured them I had the 
greatest faith in your system, which was the only one that reason approved of. 
I have given some of your cards also to Dr. Boulein, of this city, who told me he 
would write you and get some of your medicines for one of his patients — a gen- 
tleman of this city, who is badly troubled with asthma. 

Thus far, my wife is doing well. I was much afraid of the influence of the 
first cold weather of this season ; but I am happy to say that it has had no bad 
effect upon her. I shall write you at the end of this month. 

Yours respectfully, H. Lauzingham. 



DISEASES PECULIAR TO FEMALES. 227 

New-Orleans, September 17, I860. 
Dr. Andrew Stone : Dear Sir : Will you be pleased to send me by the safest 
conveyance, the express, two bottles of your Bronchial Syrup ? My wife derives 
the greatest benefit from your Syrup. H. Lauzingham. ' 

New-Orleans, February 6, 1861. 

Dr. Andrew Stone : Dear Sir : Will you be pleased to send me by express 
two bottles more of your Bronchial Syrup t 

My wife has had a slight cold, which caused a little return of her cough, but is 
again improving. She wants me to get two bottles of your Syrup, which 
has done her a great deal of good, in connection with your inhaling remedies. 

Pray cause them to be packed in such a manner as will secure safety and pre- 
vent breakage on the way. Yours, etc., H. Lauzingham. 

Practical Remarks. 

We introduce this correspondence and statement of this patient's 
case here, together with a method of our treatment, and it is arranged 
with such a system, the facilities of its administration are so complete 
and so ready under all circumstances, even in the most aggravated forms 
of disease pertaining to the throat and lungs, that it can be forwarded 
to all parts of the world, and adopted at the home of the patient with 
the most happy and gratifying results, as the above case will shoAV. 
Six months after Mrs. Lauzingham came under our treatment, we had 
advices from her husband that she was so far restored from her cough 
and inflammation, (laryngitis,) that she could bear any changes of the 
weather in the winter, without being unfavorably affected ; whereas, 
in the summer in New-Orleans, when she first came under our treat- 
ment, she was unable to go to the door without being threatened with 
a serious cold, and aggravating her cough alarmingly. It will be well 
to again say here that accompanying all our medical prescriptions, we 
make every provision for the diet and hygienic management and treat- 
ment of each patient, enjoining the absolute laws of life and health to 
be observed and carried out in full harmony ; and it is our strict re- 
quirement on the part of our patients to rigidly enforce the laws of 
hygiene which causes our treatment to become so efficient. 

A striking Cure of a most aggravated case of Loss of Voice, (Aphonia,) Laryn- 
gitis, Bronchitis, and Hoarseness, complicated with great Derangement of the 
Digestive Functions. 

From W. S. Aumock, A.M., Principal of the Amsterdam Academy, Amster- 
dam, Montgomery County, JW. Y. : 

Dr. Stone : Dear Sir : About a year ago, I took a severe cold one day, and 
awoke the next morning to find myself literally speechless — not being able to 
utter an audible word. Thinking it to be a temporary hoarseness, to which I 
had been occasionally subject from over-taxation, or protracted use of the voice, 



228 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

I neglected it for some days, trusting to the recuperative energies of nature. 
Aphonia still continuing, however, I began the use of domestic remedies recom- 
mended by various friends ; then applied to a regular physician, who prescribed 
gargles and used the probang, with slight relief; then tried a few of the infinitesi- 
mal doses of the homeopathist ; but all would not do. They did not reach the 
scat of the disease, which was chiefly in the larynx, and apparently extending 
toward the lungs. 

In the mean time, I was obliged to resume my school-duties, which, of course, 
were performed chiefly by proxy, under my personal supervision, but with great 
inconvenience both to myself and the school. 

At last, when I began to despair of a cure, after repeated trials of six or eight 
weeks, and a change of vocation seemed almost imperative, I was referred to 
Dr. Stone, of the Troy Lung and Hygienic Institution, as most likely to restore 
my health and speech. Like a drowning man, I caught at what, I frankly con- 
fess, I then considered as a mere straw, and paid him a visit. 

He pronounced it at once a serious case of " disease of the larynx, throat, 
and bronchia, with complications of derangement of the digestive functions," 
to which I had been for years more or less subject, but was confident of effect- 
ing a cure by general and local treatment. So ready and clear was his diagno- 
sis of the case, and so confident was he of success, that I gladly and trustingly 
placed myself under his care and directions. 

The inhalation acted almost by magic on the vocal organs, and in three days 
I was able to resume my official duties in the school-room, conducting all my re- 
citations personally ; while the use of the general remedies, with the dietetic and 
other sanitary observances prescribed, gradually restored all the functions to 
their normal activity, and in less than a month I was in better condition of 
health than I had been for years before. 

I make this statement as an act of justice to Dr. Stone, and with the hope 
that I may, through him and the Institution he represents, be of some benefit to 
suffering humanity. W. S. Aumock. 

Amsterdam, New-York, July 10, 1862. 



MABASMUS. 229 



Jfcctfott %mx&$-$t»L 



Marasmus, or a Consumption of the Tissues and Vital Fluids of the Body. 
Self-immolation, or Sacrifice on the Altar of Passion, the Cause for the Early 
Physical Degeneracy of the American People. 

Thus far we have been engaged in describing a class of diseases 
which have a peculiar tendency to affect the lungs and respiratory 
organs — the seat of life and vitality — and to terminate fatally, but too 
often, in that melancholy manner so long and so generally known as 
Pulmonary Consumption. We come now to consider Consumption 
under another, and it may be said with truth, a new form of disease, 
known as Marasmus. 

What, then, is Marasmus ? As Tubercular Consumption is, generally 
speaking, at first a local disease, a consumption of the lungs, so 
Marasmus is a consumption gradually, and comparatively speaking, of 
the whole, entire body, both nerve and muscular tissue, the juices and 
blood of the system — in fact, the vital fluids. The attentive and in- 
terested reader can not fail to have noticed, in the statistics given, 
the great fatality heretofore of Pulmonary Consumption. It is equal 
to one fourth or one fifth of the entire bills of mortality throughout the 
United States. But as all-pervading and as fatal as Tubercular Con- 
sumption is, Marasmus is equally as fatal and as generally prevalent. 
It, in fact, constitutes that great characteristic national malady known 
as Nervous Debility, which leads to earl y physical, and it is greatly 
to be feared too often, moral degeneracy and premature decay. 

Go where we will, look about us on every side, in nearly every 
family, on the street, and in the social circles of life, wherever we 
resort, we find depicted before us in the emaciated and withered forms, 
sickly, sallow, or pale countenances, a race of people whose shapeless, 
withered, and ill-formed organisms indicate but too strikingly and 
truthfully to the reflecting mind, the physiologist or the philosopher, 
that some great fundamental law has been seriously violated. The 
ruddy hue of health, the florid countenance, the lustrous, sparkling 
eye, the ruby lip, the well-developed limb and rotundity of muscle 
that carried strength and vigor in each succeeding step, that charac- 
terized our ancestors of some fifty or sixty years since, are fast giving 



230 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

place to a succession of offspring of diminished stature and depreciated 
form, marked by pallid countenance, pale and bloodless lip, an eye of 
dimmed lustre and vigor, ill-formed and shapeless limbs, a trembling, 
tottering gait — the whole forming a representative of decrepitude 
and decay. 

In view of the fearful mortality of these two great classes of mala- 
dies, namely, Marasmus and Pulmonary Consumption ; and when we 
take into consideration, at the same time, the great waste of mankind 
by Scrofula, and a thousand other diseases of an acute and chronic 
nature, are we not led to ask the question : How many deaths occur 
naturally — that is, by the natural wearing out of the body, the casket 
that contains the immortal gem, in the manner that Omnipotent Wis- 
dom designed, independent of any organic disease? In view of these 
facts, the law of statistics, are we not forced to the melancholy conclu- 
sion, that nearly all deaths now occur unnaturally and prematurely? Do 
we take into consideration, that just in proportion to the physical de- 
preciation of the vital stamina of the body, come the shortness and 
uncertainty of human life ? A whole generation is born, and passes 
from the stage of existence within the period of thirty-three years, in 
the United States ! There can not be, then, but one natural death in 
five hundred, if there is in five thousand! The awful conclusion 
forces itself upon our reason and comprehension, whether we will heed 
it, whether Ave will realize it, or not, that nearly all the deaths that now 
occur are, in a word, and in fact, suicidal in some form or other. 

It was no part in the design of Omnipotent Wisdom, in the creation 
of man, that he should be continually suffering with disease, with pain 
and physical disability, and pass from the stage of human action so 
early and so prematurely. It will be vivid in the recollection of many 
of my readers, that this was not the case with our immediate ances- 
tors — even our own parents or grandparents. We can recollect the 
time when our race lived to reach a ripe old age; that people in 
advanced life, both male and female, Were met with in society almost 
as common as to meet with the young. They stood up before us in 
the majesty and dignity of full and well-developed physical forms, 
uncomplaining and unaffected with the innumerable pains and aches 
and symptoms of decrepitude and decay that mark the present race 
on every side. Their exit from the sphere of existence was not 
marked, as now, by the frightful ravages of disease. They laid off the 
physical body, when it had fulfilled its purposes, as we deliberately 
lay off a garment, and life took its exit from the earthly tabernacle as 
calmly and as sweetly as the gentle flickerings of an expiring taper. 
The noble casket had fulfilled and accomplished its work in the earthly 



MAKASMUS. 231 

sphere of developing that immortality which it contained^ and prepar- 
ing it for a new and sublimer mission beyond the portals of the grave, 
which it was prepared rightly and naturally to occupy. No ardent 
tie of parental, of filial earthly affection was suddenly, rudely rup- 
tured ; no keen poignance of grief like that which attends the too 
often sudden, unexpected exit of life that is met with now in childhood 
and in youth, where the happiness of homes, of firesides and domestic 
circles, of nearly every family, is almost daily blighted, and a gloom 
cast over the prospects of life, and the mother's heart lacerated with 
anguish and appalled by the unexpected invasions of the " Fell De- 
stroyer," which takes from her a beloved daughter just blooming into 
adolescence and womanhood, and which is removing the rosy hue of 
health and paling the cheeks of surviving sisters. Or the energies of 
some fond and doting father are crushed by the sudden removal of a 
beloved son, in whom were centered the hopes of future promise of 
greatness, of genius, and talent — blighted by the mildews of life, mys- 
teriously, while yet on the threshold of human existence, by causes by 
him unthought of, that had insidiously invaded the physical constitu- 
tion, as the serpent which winds its coils silently and certainly around 
his victim, and crushes his vitals before any danger to life was antici- 
pated. Occasionally we see some aged person — some revered father or 
mother — a type and fair representative of what our race once was in 
physical, vital stamina, and in the enjoyment of the blessings of health. 
Such a person has seen three whole, entire generations born and pass 
from the stage of being, and yet he has remained in this mundane 
sphere. 

Do we take into consideration and profound reflection, as we ought 
to, the causes and the consequences combined in this one great truth ? 
And what are they? Does it not become our solemn duty to inquire 
into the causes for such awful effects — for such an awful devastation of 
human health, destruction of human life, and physical degeneracy ? 
The cause can not be attributed to any change in our climate, for that 
has improved in healthfulness as the forests have been leveled and the 
soil cultivated, and the malaria or miasm that affected the early set- 
tlers has disappeared from among us. Our climate, therefore, is as 
healthy, proved to he so, as that of any other civilized country on the 
face of the globe. The sin, therefore, lies at our own door. The 
responsibility then belongs to every individual. 

The truth is, we have come to place too low an estimate upon human 
life, and consequently upon human health. In our rage and thirst for 
wealth, God's greatest blessing to man has been overlooked and dis- 
regarded ; and in seeking for wealth, we have embodied the very ele- 



2o2 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

mente of our own destruction — the luxuries of life. Gold, though a 
good, is not the greatest good; yet it is so esteemed, and worshiped 
more profoundly than all the attributes of the supreme Creator ; and 
by a conventional law of society, man is estimated by his fellow-men 
just in proportion to his earthly possessions of dollars and fading, evan- 
escent riches, instead of true worth and the genuine principles of hu- 
manity. Does it not become, then, a source of great humiliation that 
man, created in the image of his Maker, and embodying to a certain 
extent all his attributes, shall so traffic and sacrifice his moral principle 
and decision of character, which alone can make him a man, for the 
merest dross, which, when possessed, only allures him, like so many 
floating baubles, upon the ocean of life, and in the end make ship- 
wreck of his highest happiness and his eternal enjoyment ? 

Let us pause here for one moment, and reflect upon the momentous 
truth embodied and expressed in this short sentence just narrated. 
How few among the great mass of mankind who daily live have any 
higher motive in life than the acquirement of money and the commod- 
ities of life which that will buy, which, when obtained, prove the very 
destruction of their health and the true enjoyments of life! In a word, 
it defeats the very purposes of Omnipotence, in curtailing our earthly 
sphere of existence. Such is the appalling fact, that the evanescent 
fashions of society, purchased by gold, bear a most tyrannical sway 
over the souls and bodies of men, to that extent to demoralize the high- 
est principles of their nature; for knowing as they do the deleterious 
influences of habits, their modes of dress and manners of living from 
day to day, in the devastation of health, and its evil tendencies to 
their life, that they will sacrifice the latter rather than to cultivate the 
moral decision to give up the former. 

There are no arts that we possess, no material principles of science, 
no lessons in education, moral ethics or political economy, or the 
science of human life, that have not had their precedents in the histo- 
ries of other nations and other empires of the world — even republics, 
if you please — that have preceded us. Go to Greece and to Rome. 
Read the Decline and Fall of the Iioman Empire, by Gibbon. Go 
even to Sparta and Athens, Carthage and Thebes, and you will learn 
that centuries ago those states possessed and wielded power and great- 
ness just in proportion to the possession of sound physical and vital 
stamina. The same history will tell you, at the same time, that when 
they accomplished their purposes of controlling the empires of the 
world by the authority of might, they became relax and negligent of 
the natural and rational means and agencies that had given them 
the stamina of greatness; they became devotees to the luxuries that 



MAKASMUS. 233 

their wealth and earthly possessions bought them, and consequently their 
luxurious and indolent habits of life sapped the springs of sustenance, 
demoralized and degenerated in their nature, and each nation in turn 
became subjugated by the stronger, and they again in turn, by the 
power of wealth or earthly possession, became degenerated. It is the 
very possession of money or wealth that induces the very artificial 
habits of life that in turn sap the very physical and moral stamina of 
our nature. Though, in the language of the poet, " happiness may be 
all our being's end and aim," still that happiness can not be realized 
in the pleasures of acquirement of the refinements of life which the 
luxuries of money produce. 

Pause and reflect, then, and behold the inevitable law of Omnipo- 
tence which underlies the human action and penetrates through all 
human motives. See the awful end of divine justice and divine com- 
pensation keeping pace with the progress of society, and holding in 
check, as in the majesty of divine equity, the meted penalty for every 
violation, whether physical or moral. Behold, then, in our awful 
physical suffering, in the sacrifice of our health by the innumerable 
diseases that we have of modern origin, the offspring of civilized so- 
ciety and our fashionable habits of life. Thus the modern diseases 
which come to mortify our nature, and bring us back to reflection to 
know what are the designs of Omnipotence in the creation of our 
bodies. Will you not perceive, then, the awful, appalling truth that 
comes to you to teach you, in your effeminacy, in your physical de- 
bility and impotence of j owe physical, vital stamina? Your failing 
health y the early decline and sacrifice of your children ; the pains, 
anguish, and physical tortures and lacerations of disease ; the melan- 
choly decline of childhood and the early sacrifice of youth; the blighted 
hopes of ambition ; the disappointments of life, and the mortifications 
so often felt when called to yield up the possessions and the goods of 
this world that you have coveted so tenaciously, by an early, un- 
looked-for death ; all conspire to show you that you have calculated 
your hopes of happiness upon fading, fleeting, and erroneous princi- 
ples. The truth is, the motives of mankind imply in their daily life 
and conduct that they look to the sensual pleasures of this world for 
their happiness and enjoyment, as though this was the design of Om- 
nipotence in their nature and their being. So much so has this 
become the feeling, ah! the education of childhood, youth, and of 
advanced years, and so much is it acted upon and carried out in the 
practical details of life every day, almost universally so, that the 
motto is, though a painful one to reflect upon : "A short life and a 
merry one." 



234 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

How true it is that life in the United States of America, at least, 
notwithstanding the fact that its present inhabitants are the boasted 
descendants of the Anglo-Saxon and the hardy pilgrim fathers that 
early peopled this continent but a little time ago, has come to be most 
melancholy short — but a span! "Know you not that your ^body is 
the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of 
God, and ye are not your own." Your life, then — the Holy Ghost it 
should be — your immortality, which the tabernacle, your body, pos- 
sesses, and which you hold with such an uncertain tenure, is but a 
trust from Omnipotent Wisdom, a loan from God, your Father. What 
right, then, have you, what right have mankind to thus recklessly 
sacrifice their health, and " pull upon themselves swift destruction by 
the work of their hands," and precipitate themselves uncalled for on 
the shores of an unknown world years in advance of the designs of 
Omnipotent Wisdom ? 

In the present unnatural manner of living, the artificial, forced habit, 
as it were, of developing childhood and youth, the mysterious and 
conflicting passions of their nature, which should have lain dormant 
yet for years, are brought into play and into conflict. It is then amid 
the giddy mazes of this world, the allurements of fashion, the stimulus 
of ambition to pride and vain show, that the intrinsic value of health 
is forgotten ; it is not inculcated. 

A bed of sickness is the greatest of all levelers on this side of the 
grave. It is when health is sacrificed, pain and anguish seize the body, 
the system becomes enervated, strength has failed, the appetite is 
gone, the brow becomes fevered, and nights are made weary from 
sleeplessness and restlessness, and the grave yawns so unexpectedly to 
receive them — it is then that reason and reflection for the first time 
assume their throne, and the contemplation of a life which is so early 
to be laid down is brought into serious reflection, and the momentous 
value of health begins to be realized. It is then, for the first time, on 
the brink of the tomb, that life to the possessor becomes of value, and 
the consideration that he is now to be precipitated so prematurely, so 
early beyond that " bourne from whence no traveler can return," be- 
comes direful and appalling, and in the language of the poet Young: 
" Ah ! what thoughts shall hover there !" Yes, better, far more con- 
soling would it be for every one who is so recklessly and prematurely 
sacrificing himself, were he to take and ponder upon these reflections, 
in anticipation of the inevitable result of a reckless disregard of the 
supreme laws of life, and, by so doing, prevent such direful conse- 
quences. 

These truthful preliminary observations respecting the certain ten- 



MAEASMUS. 235 

dency of our race to early physical degeneracy open the way to the 
consideration of the subject of Marasmus and its causes. We have 
already alluded in explicit and, we think, striking language to the not 
only apparent but real condition of a general physical depreciation. 
For such an effect, the reader will understand, there must be an ade- 
quate cause. Laws inexorable in their condition govern our physical, 
mental, and moral nature ; and when these laws are violated, the 
penalties belong to us, and not to the supreme Law-Giver. To con- 
vey to the reader a full comprehension of the nature and meaning of 
Marasmus, we conceive that it can be done in a series of personal nar- 
ratives better than in a general history. And here it is necessary for 
us to suggest that we have for many years been actively engaged in 
an extensive practice of medicine, filling a department that has 
brought to us for advice and treatment vast numbers of those in the 
early stages of existence in childhood, in youth, adolescence, and more 
advanced life. As we have before mentioned, circumstances in the 
early part of the author's life induced him to devote great attention 
to a special department of practice in Pulmonary Consumption. This 
opened the way many years since to the discovery of a great mortal- 
ity in the early periods of life, in childhood and youth, from wasting 
forms of disease that in reality implicated the whole system, and did 
not locate at the lungs, as had been supposed, although the impression 
was to the patient, or to the parents of the child, or the immediate 
guardians of the patient, that such was Pulmonary Consumption. 
But as science had developed such new light, aided by new and cer- 
tain discoveries, the pulmometer and double stethoscope, the author 
was enabled to determine whether the lungs and vital organs were 
diseased or not. Finding to a moral certainty that such general 
wasting diseases, in the large majority of instances, did not implicate 
the lungs in consumption, he was led into profound thought and 
reflection and consequent investigation to know the cause for those 
maladies so generally prevalent in the early periods of life, and often 
proved most melancholy fatal, bidding defiance to every proffered aid 
that art and science then seemingly possessed. 

This class of more modern maladies which in time came to receive 
the name of nervous debility, assumed a diversity of shapes and fea- 
tures, taking on almost, in many instances, indescribable external 
symptoms and manifestations. A personal history of one, two, or 
more cases in each different class — as some one or more of the vital 
organs appeared to share more extensively in the sympathy of the 
morbid effect of the primary action — will be necessary for a full com- 
prehension of them. 



236 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

CASE No. 1. 

A consultation brought to our notice a young man, accompanied by his 
brother, as an aid and protector, from a distance, whose age was fifteen or six- 
teen years. Naturally he had a remarkable and superior phrenological and 
mental development. He was precocious, and nature had given him early marks 
of intellectuality and capacities for future greatness. He presented to us a body 
that was but a frame and a skeleton, which once had possessed muscles, doubt- 
less well developed, unquestionably limbs that had been well formed and 
rounded, and which had exercised vigor and strength ; but now he was emaci- 
ated and but a shadow of what he once was — a living skeleton of bones, with 
some withered, dried, as it were, integument covering them ; his countenance 
tilled with wrinkles, wearing the aspect of decrepitude and decay, and appar- 
ent old age, while yet but little past the period of puberty. 

In conducting our investigations to ascertain the true physical condition of 
the lungs, a necessary removal of his apparel exposed his body, which almost 
struck us, even in our professional capacity, with the gravity that years of expe- 
rience had brought us, with a shudder and awe. He was attenuated to such an 
extent that his stomach and abdomen were inverted, and almost approximated 
the spinal column ; the liver had become shrunken and withered from that once 
large and spacious gland, which is the largest in the human system, to a state 
of atrophy ; the mesentery and glands of the bowels had decayed ; he hardly 
seemed to possess a pound of blood ; the fluids and juices of the body were 
dried up and gone ; his heart beat feebly ; his pulse was but a thread ; the 
lungs were organically sound, but their function was carried on very feebly, the 
breathing being very slow instead of accelerated as in tubercular consumption ; 
the prime function of the bowels was so arrested by torpor and inaction that 
there was scarce a movement once a week. Other functions of the body were 
quite abnormal. His eyes, which had once been full, were now sunken in their 
sockets ; the sense of hearing and seeing both were much impaired. Yet he 
had no cough, nor ulceration of the lungs ; neither was there any organic dis- 
ease of the heart or the stomach ; but yet all these organs were deranged in 
their function, without any structural disorganization ; his voice was sepulchral, 
and he appeared like a mournful spectacle of some unfortunate youth whom 
chance or misfortune had left on some deserted, depopulated island, where sus- 
tenance had been out of his reach for months. 

Marasmus, certainly, is a correct appellation for such a disease — for such a 
wasting of the tissues of the body. What could have teen its cause ? 

CASE No. 2. 

J. W., aged twenty, accompanied by his father, came from a distant part of 
the country to consult me. His health had been failing gradually for some four 
or five years, though he had been able to do some light work until about one 
year, when he had abandoned, from failing health and strength, all attempts at 
labor. J I is appetite was good, even to craving — it was vitiated or morbid — and 
food was taken in large quantities, prompted by this voracious appetite, and. 



MAKASMUS. 237 

though rarely attended with oppression or uneasiness after eating, yet he did 
not feel nourished or strengthened by what he ate. This was surprising both 
to him and his friends. He had no cough ; his breathing, as in the other case, 
was not accelerated, but feeble and rather languid. He was not so emaciated 
as in the preceding case, yet was extremely debilitated, and troubled with in- 
tense palpitation of the heart on making any undue exertion, like attempts at 
much exercise, walking, or ascending a hill or flight of stairs quickly. Indeed, 
this palpitation troubled him frequently, he told me, at the latter part of the 
night, when he would awake out of some frightful or startling dream, when he 
would discover himself under a kind of shock or shudder that produced great 
apprehension, which would be succeeded by a feeling of great lassitude, de- 
spondency, or dejectedness the day after. These paroxysms occurred from 
once to twice a week. He had lost all disposition or feeling to go into society, 
feeling a strong disposition to solitude and retirement, though he had been 
sprightly, and cheerful, and fond of society and the company of the young and 
his companions. He had great languor of spirits and prostration of physical 
strength. He was troubled with cold feet and an irregular determination of 
blood to the head, though the countenance and lips were pallid. His articula- 
tion had become affected to hesitancy, and, by strict observation, we discovered 
that it was not from any paralysis of the organs of speech, but from a failing 
memory in the use of words in particular, which troubled him exceedingly to 
express even his own wants. He had become petulant and childish. 

CASE No. 3. 

D. J., a young man, aged twenty- three years, came all the way from Monon- 
galia county, in Western Virginia, last summer, to consult us in regard to his 
condition, which was a deplorable one indeed. The instant that he entered our 
office we perceived at once, from the downcast look, retiring eye, and inexpressi- 
ble cast of countenance, the nature of his pitiable condition. His gait was feeble 
and tottering, and he trembled at every step, conveying the impression of in- 
toxication and decrepitude combined, though he was not a victim of intemper- 
ate habits. He was a counterpart in every respect of case Number One, with 
many additional features of an almost anomalous character. His voice was al- 
ready weak and tremulous, and he conversed with great hesitancy and slow- 
ness, lacking command of words or ideas to make known his wants readily. 
An instantaneous view of his phrenological organization satisfied me that he was 
not naturally idiotic or imbecile, for his organization was one of superior cast, 
possessing large perceptive and reflective, with a fair balance of the moral 
faculties. Naturally his organ of language had been large, but, as in the first 
case, those once full orbs were low in their sunken sockets. The expression of 
the eye evidently carried the impression of self-degradation and self-condemna- 
tion that both his mental- and physical suffering were from a self-inducted 
cause. His countenance was extremely sallow, resembling that of a corpse 
more than of a living person. His body was extremely emaciated, and the skin 
wore a most unhealthy aspect in every part, and to the touch presented a clam- 
my, cold, and almost repulsive sensation, with an odor extremely disgusting and 



238 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

sickening, so much so that for several days after being under treatment by 
medicated baths he sickened his attendant, who was a stout, healthy man. His 
body, in every part, as well as every vital organ, seemed to be withered and 
wasted to the greatest extreme. His pulse was small and thready, indicating 
a feeble action of the heart and a prostrated condition of the nerve-forces — in 
fact, a complete marasmus or consumption of the spinal nerves, known as tabes 
doi'salis, combined with a consumption of the mesenteric glands of the bowels, 
as in the first case narrated. The function of the bowels was almost suspend- 
ed. The secretions of the kidneys were of that peculiar character known to 
urinary pathologists as phosphatic, being pale and thin or white and milky, in- 
dicating extreme loss of the phosphates, which elements compose the brain and 
nerve-tissue, showing in this, as in all similar cases, generally a wasting of the 
nerve-tissues exceeding all supply by nutrition and assimilation. 

He expressed himself of having the most curious and unpleasant sensations 
down the spinal column, a sense of crawling and creeping, as though insects 
were burrowing in his spine. His sleep was disturbed by dreams of a most un- 
pleasant character, with the impression that some miniature beings, like fairies 
of an evil nature, came to him and whispered evil thoughts in his ear, which 
excited his imagination, that would induce a physical or pathological effect upon 
his body, that caused him to awake with a shudder to think of the deplorable 
condition that he was in, presenting the awful truth to him, that not only 
health and physical stamina were sapped, but that the dignity of soul which 
once animated a souud body was wrecked also never to be recovered here. 

What a great field of instruction is presented here in this class of cases to the 
philanthropic and the conscientious physician who sees mind, immortality, and 
the dignity of power, that should go to constitute manly greatness, which is be- 
yond the simple scope of the ordinary physician, who can see nothing in dis- 
ease apart from the simple study of prescribing medicines ! But it furnishes to 
the philosophic metaphysician a key to unlock and a clue to unravel and fathom 
the mysteries of the great number of multiform complex diseases which are be- 
coming daily extensively developed by artificial habits of life and society of 
more modern origin. It demonstrates this great philosophic fact, namely, that 
those numerous mysterious modern maladies, developing such fearful melan- 
choly ravages of health and of life among the young in childhood, in youth, and 
in middle age, often have their origin in the mind in a mental cause of a pas- 
sional, emotional nature ; and it teaches also convictions which, alas ! come too 
late to thousands to be profited by — that for these physical ills their source of 
reliance for a cure is impotent indeed. 

We have striking instruction conveyed in the above case which is only a 
counterpart of hundreds and thousands that we, in our professional capacity, are 
annually called to witness, who find no skill among the medical ranks, where 
they are situated and live, competent to meet their emergencies, because their 
cause has been of the most silent nature ; it has run in a hidden and obscure 
current, and, for the most part, has been unsuspected and unthought of by the 
parents, friends, or immediate guardians of the youthful sufferers ; hence, when 
the evidence of disease and physical prostration is manifested, external symp- 



MAKASMUS. 239 

toms only are prescribed for by the old-school, drug-giving physician, who sees 
nothing and consequently prescribes for nothing but the present outward symp- 
tom or manifestation, instead of tracing effects to their causes in order to remove 
them. Hence, as we above suggested, we are annually consulted by hundreds 
and thousands, perchance like the case immediately detailed above, if not per- 
sonally, by letter and otherwise, by victims just similarly situated, imploring 
our aid for their relief and restoration to health, mentally, morally, and phy- 
sically, with the urgent qualification and consideration that their situation shall 
be kept perfectly secret, perfectly confidential, in our bosom, fearing that their 
nearest and dearest friends on earth shall apprehend, by the awful suspicion of 
the inward monitor, generated by the very nature of their disease, the nature 
of their malady and its humiliating cause. 

The way that our claims were brought to the notice of the above-mentioned 
patient, who traveled alone in his sick and forlorn condition nearly thirteen 
hundred miles into a strange land to consult us, by the tender regards of an 
elder brother, who, after reading of the publication of our brief treatise on the 
"Causes of Premature Decay of American Youth," some three or four years 
ago, which suggested to him the cause for his brother's declining health, he 
sent to us and ordered this little volume and placed it in his hands, with the 
hope and solicitude that it would be to him an angel-messenger of relief. 

In giving the history of the above cases, our endeavor has been to 
state simply the true condition and symptoms of each patient, as they 
existed, in as truthful and correct style as possible, without any desire 
to exaggerate or magnify. Whatever much of misery, -wretchedness, 
or woe may seem to be depicted in the forlorn condition of each one, 
we do not believe it to be sufficiently expressive of their inward men- 
tal suffering and anguish, which usually seems to challenge words or 
human ingenuity in vain. Neither have we ventured, in describing 
those cases, to hint at the cause which was embosomed to us. Our 
motive in writing this section is to impart light which has long been 
needed respecting this hitherto hidden and intricate class of modern 
maladies, and for the want of which parents in thousands of instances 
have been entirely ignorant of the cause that consigned so many of 
their children and beloved offspring to a premature grave. 

In all sciences, the study of causes is the most difficult. This is true 
of medicine, and especially the malady or class of affections forming 
the subject of this section. Says the late Dr. Marshall Hall : " Medi- 
cine without the most accurate diagnosis (discrimination) and the 
most careful adoption of means to a cure, is mere empiricism ; and a 
criticism neglecting this is futile and unworthy of our possession and 
discreditable to its author." 

Availing myself, then, of the preeminent testimony of such a distin- 
guished physician as the late Dr. Marshall Hall, of London, I shall at 



240 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

once proceed to impart that light which will show the cause for such 
frightful cases of Marasmus, given in the language of the victims 
t ho 1 1 selves. 

CASE No. 4. 

Dr. Stone : Your circular described my case so accurately that I can not re- 
frain from consulting you immediately. I feel as though it were a matter of 
future happiness or a life of misery hereafter, if I did not receive proper medical 
aid now. 

In regard to my symptoms, I will merely say that I have been an invalid for 
five years, caused by the loss of much semen about that time, and when I be- 
came aware of this fact, ignorance and modesty prevented me from seeking 
proper medical aid. The principal symptoms are, a determination of blood to 
the head, cold hands and feet, debility and irritability of the nervous system, 
dyspepsia and liver complaint. But the most unpleasant feeling of all is the de- 
rangement of the mind, which unfits me for business or pleasure, rendering me 
misanthropical and hypochondriacal. I am also troubled with nervous deafness, 
and a continued noise in the ears, like the puffing of an exhaust-pipe, at every 
pulsation of the heart ; floating specks before the eyes, dislike for society, de- 
privation of that cheerfulness and buoyancy of spirits which accompany vigorous 
manhood ; seminal emissions, also a dead feeling in the private parts, being sel- 
dom or never troubled with erections of the penis ; urine pale, with sediment at 
the bottom resembling brick-dust. L. R. 

CASE No. 5. 

Dr. Stone : Being awakened to a sense of my condition by reading your pam- 
phlet, I wish to seek relief from you. I fear, sir, judging by the symptoms 
therein named, that I am a victim of this degrading vice, which is carrying many 
to an untimely grave, namely, masturbation. 

About two years ago I was taught how to excite pleasurable feelings by an 
older shopmate, and from that time until I read your book, some three months 
ago, I have practiced this vile habit. Would to God that I had seen your book 
sooner — if I had, I would not this day be what I am. No one knows the agonies 
of my mind to think that I was so ignorantly led into that debasing vice, which 
I greatly fear has ruined my health for life. Self-pollution is what I never heard 
of until I saw it in your little book, and then little did I think I was one of its 
victims. Doctor ! this is the first time I have made known my fault to any 
human being, and I sincerely hope you will not expose me, for I need pity more 
than reproach, as I was blindly led into practicing it. Since practicing this evil 
habit, I have not had much peace of mind— life has been a burden to me. 

I am now in my nineteenth year, and have just begun to work for myself. 
To think that my own ignorance has so impaired my health at the verge of man- 
hood is enough to break my heart. I make known my state to you because I 
think you are ordained of God to save much of the youth of the present age 
from an untimely grave. I am not living with my parents at present, nor do I 
want them to know my proceedings. Yours truly, W. C. 



MARASMUS. 241 

CASE No. 6. 

Dr. Stone : I sent to you some four or five weeks ago and obtained your 
valuable treatise on the causes of the " Premature Decay of American Youth," 
and I have read the same with intense interest, for it narrates the very 
cause which has led to the development of my own deplorable condition ; there- 
fore I am induced to write you to ask your advice respecting the cure and res- 
toration of my health from those numerous diseases which I am now suffering 
under. I am now about sixteen years of age, and have almost constantly fol- 
lowed the evil habit of self-abuse ever since I was ten years of age until about 
nine months ago, when I became convinced of its effects upon my health, and 
left it off. I have noticed when at school, after I had been studying a little 
while, that I would have a severe headache, accompanied sometimes with emis- 
sions through the day. My system now seems entirely prostrated ; my spirits 
are greatly depressed, so much so that I have wished for death a great many 
times ; my back is also very weak ; and after eating my meals, however small the 
portion I eat, my appetite being very limited, I have an uncomfortable feeling as if 
there were a great weight lying upon my stomach ; during the day also I have 
severe pains in my stomach. I have a great aversion to study and to going 
into society ; fretfulness of temper and an utter feeling of loneliness in the world ; 
upon running a few rods, great hurriedness of breathing and distress for breath 
overtakes me. I am greatly troubled with emissions of semen at night, after 
one of which my back will be very lame and have a sort of numb feeling. 
These are my main symptoms. Respectfully yours, A. A. 

CASE No. 7. 

Dr. Stone : My mind is, if possible, in a worse condition than my body. I 
sometimes feel as though I should be insane. My grief is so great that I can 
not keep back all appearance of it, and my boarding-master and mistress have 
lately discovered it. 

"When I think of what I was, and might have been, and what I am, and when 
I reflect that I have one of the strongest of American minds, (I say this not 
boastingly, for Nature gave it to me,) and when I realize what I might have 
done, and still continue to do for God and humanity, and then when I think 
again that I am surely going to a premature grave, and that all these gifts that 
God has given me, so valuable to myself and might be to others — to be wrecked 
upon the fearful rock of indulgence — it causes a grief which none but those who 
have experienced it can know. 

My dear sir, oh ! help me if you can — one of earth's sufferers in body and 
mind — and I will not only give you pecuniary reward, but will also weary 
heaven with my prayers for your welfare. 

Doubtless I deserve censure, but what I need now is warm sympathy. God 
only knows my anguish of spirit. I have an appointment to preach this even- 
ing, and I feel much better fitted to make my bed in hell than to attempt it. I 
tell you, sir, I am almost driven to despair, even while I write. I fear, with 
Paul, that after having preached to others, I shall myself become a cast-away. 
16 



242 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

I often think it can not be that one so guilty as myself has the least ground for 
hope, here or hereafter. 

As I said, I can not study as I wish. Lately when trying to sermonize from 
the text, " To obey is better than to sacrifice," the truth came upon me with 
such overwhelming power, that I was obliged to abandon it until the mind was 
calmer. Yours truly, J. T. 

CASE No. 8. 

Shelbyville, April 10, 1862. 

Dr. Stone : I received your book a few days ago ; it is indeed a grand book, 
such a book, I believe, was never known before in this country. 

I am twenty-four years of age. I have never exposed myself to any one. I 
have not been well for three years, and have spent more than one hundred dol- 
lars to get well, but it is all the same. I never thought that self-abuse would 
entail such direful maladies upon a man. I have an everlasting beating (flutter- 
ing) about my heart ; back, head, legs, and breast are very sore —all brought 
about by self-abuse. I would like to be cured, etc. 

CASE No. 9. 

St. Paul, Minn., April 11, 1861. 

Dr. Stone : Dear Sir : I received your pamphlet on the causes of premature 
decay this morning, and have perused it carefully. I think it the best work I 
ever read on the subject. I have received many of the kind of late, but none to 
compare with it. 

I would be glad to put myself under your treatment immediately — had I the 
money, I would do so. I have delayed treatment from time to time, hoping that 
I could conquer and stop the practice, but never have been able to do so for a 
longer space of time than seven to ten daj^s. The greatest torment I suffer 
from is a breaking out of eruptions on my face, which is at present literally 
covered with them, so much so that I am ashamed to show my face. 

CASE No. 10. 

Dr. Stone : Sir : I am a boy, eighteen years of age, with very little educa- 
tion, a good home and indulgent parents. 

Four years ago I began to practice a habit vile and disgusting as it is ruinous 
to the body and soul. But vile as it was, I indulged myself in it more than a 
year, before I found that it was hurting me ; but when I did find this out, I 
stopped it. All the symptoms of hurt then were weakness of the knees, and a 
bad humor on my face. This was in the spring. But the next fall, I do not 
know what it was induced me to commence again what I knew at the time would 
almost surely be my ruin. Then, and before that, I believed as I had been 
taught, that there was a merciful God ; but now it is impossible for me to believe 
that there is any overruling Power that would permit the misery and perfect hell 
upon earth that has been my portion this last three years. Once or twice since 
then, I have been almost well ; but after I commenced having seminal emissions, 



MARASMUS. 243 

I have grown worse and worse, till I have got so low that I have cursed heaven 
and earth and the day I was born into this life that others seem to enjoy, but 
which to me has been so lonely and drear that I care but little for its continuance. 
I don't know now that I am any worse than I was last year at this time, but I 
am surely no better. 

I have had to work, so that I am strong ; but having seminal emissions, I am 
subject to spells that are horrible. After having an emission, for a couple of 
weeks my knees will be weak and trembling, my energy all gone, my ears very 
badly affected, my back almost breaking, and my humor will get worse, and I 
will suffer misery and anguish which I could not have the heart to inflict on my 
own father's murderer. x\fter the two weeks are up, I may have a couple of 
natural days ; and oh ! the joy and life I then experience are not to be valued 
in dollars. 

I have obtained your little book, and if it should be the means of my cure, I 
shall value it above and hold it more sacred than all the Bibles ever written ; for 
it would not only save my body, but my soul. I can not continue in my 
right mind in this condition much longer. For many months I have thought it 
over, and have about come to the conclusion that if ere long there is not some 
improvement, I will put myself where I can be no worse. 

As I said before, I am strong, and have very good lungs. Legs, back and 
face seem to be most affected. But what seems worse than all is the loss of 
energy — an emission making me feel so lazy and dull ; and laziness and dullness 
are what I can't endure. 

I have been a store-boy some, farmed it some, and have been to sea consider- 
able. I have a good, kind father, who thinks a great deal of me ; and I would 
not for the world have him know what a brute I have made of myself, for much 
as he now thinks of me, he must then despise me. Sometimes when I complain 
of feeling dull and lazy, he will lay it all to the bad humor I have in my bloody 
(all the outward humor I have is on my face,) and press me to go to the doctor 
and get some medicine. But I know that medicine for humor is not the kind 
needed for spermatorrhea. Humbly yours, "W". T. 

CASE No. 11. 
Copy of Letters from Miss A. C. 

Case of extreme Marasmus, complicating the Brain and involving the Mind. 

Lafargeville, February, 1859. 

Dr. Stone : Dear Sir : After suffering for six months the most excruciating 
torture, I think, that ever was endured, I applied to physicians for aid ; but all 
to no purpose. I made up my mind to drag through, feeling rather delicate, 
still not knowing what my feelings might lead me to do, if not relieved soon. 
I have worked this length of time, without any energy or ambition. 

I suppose you require me to give full particulars. My health for a long 
time has been very poor. According to the course of nature, I rather gave 
way to my feelings. The trouble seemed to proceed from the womb, and I was 
attacked with a disgust towards myself and every thing that was earthly ; and 



244 PULMONAKY CONSUMPTION. 

this feeling near the abdomen was so intense that I would tear the hair from 
my head. I was determined to commit suicide. I have always been troubled 
with a feeling of this kind. 

I am twenty-three years of age ; I am very poor, and have to work very hard 
for my living. I have paid nearly forty dollars for medicines. 

I must confess to you that I have been given to self-abuse. Thus far, I have 
lost all the energies of life. My memory is gone ; and I have such a weariness of 
society and business that I feel deprived of all earthly happiness. My mind 
runs on to evil, and I feel like taking to all that is evil — to that which would 
blast my character forever. I have no affection for the opposite sex. When 
I wake in the night, such a frightful sensation all through my whole system ! 
It seems to have almost destroyed my reason. Can you relieve me of this aw- 
ful state ? It seems to affect my lungs dreadfully. I have tubercles in my 
lungs. I feel very sick at the pit of my stomach the most of the time, and such 
a tremor all through my whole system. I am very spare in flesh. 

It seems as though I could never wait to get medicine or advice from you. 
If you will please send the medicines to me, send, and let me know what the 
charges are, and I will send the money without fail ; for I fear that if I should 
remain in this state of mind, I may be led to do that which would cause my 
friends to grieve forever. I am constantly imagining evil. A. C. 

Lafargeville, February, 1859. 

Dr. Stone : Sir : I received your answer to my letter yesterday very promptly 
indeed. 

I felt at first rather delicate in sending, but I began to reflect, and came 
to the conclusion that my stay on this earth was short ; and it was with a 
sad heart that I contemplated the vice of self-abuse and its direful consequences, 
and to think that I must be classed among the misguided. Yet I thank God 
that though he saw fit to give me a very passionate nature, he gave me power to 
control it thus far, under all circumstances, and to carry me virtuously through. 
But, Doctor, should I remain in this state much longer, the course that I shall 
be led to take causes me to shed many a silent tear. As I have a very proud 
spirit, I have tried to conceal it from my friends, as far as I could conveniently. 

When I was first attacked with these awful spasms, I applied to a physician 
as my only resource ; but all to no purpose. He told me that I must not try to 
control my mind, but do and go wherever my mind craved. I had a perfect passion 
for telling over my thougV.s and feelings, and when occasionally deprived of all 
reason, and in such a confused state of mind, I would think that I should die 
were I to conceal it within my own bosom, and I would relieve myself by telling 
it. The doctor told me that there was danger of my running into a state where 
I should always remain, or be deranged. Therefore, it was quite a relief when I 
read your letter to find that you could treat my case successfully. Please ex- 
cuse me for requiring you to send the medicines before receiving your fee. 

Doctor, I desire to give you a brief history of my case ; and if you think you 
can restore my mind back to its proper locality, it will seem to me that money 
could not repay the debt that I should owe to such a friend. The first painful 



MARASMUS. 245 

idea I had was to commit suicide. This would meet me wherever I went. Final- 
ly, my feelings became so intense as to cause low-spiritedness to prevail to 
the greatest extent. At last the feeling of debility came upon me, and I claimed 
all to be enemies to me. When people would speak kindly to me, perhaps I 
would answer them, perhaps not, which was rather strange for me ; for it was 
my custom to treat all affectionately and with respect. The worst feeling of my 
mind, which is so detestable to all intelligent minds, was, that if I did not com- 
mit suicide, I should find myself in a place of prostitution ; and those are the 
awful contemplations of my mind. I feel as though I had lost sight of all earth- 
ly happiness — such a loathing and disgust towards every thing, and such a tire- 
some feeling, that even my food looks disgusting. What most discourages me is 
that nothing attracts my mind. 

Doctor, please tell me the cause of such a numbness passing over my head 
after writing — almost like a cramp. I frequently have cramps in my limbs, and 
such a thrilling sensation passing through my whole system almost momentarily, 
as if I could not stay on earth. That deranged feeling in my head now is as- 
suaged in a great measure. The most of my distress is in the lower extremi- 
ties of my body. Doctor, you do not think my mind will always run in this way 
— that friends nor home shall ever attract my mind again ? Every thing looks 
alike to me. I feel just as well in one place as another. 

I will now close, lest I weary your patience. Still, I would say that I have 
had during the past six months a great deal of colorless discharges between each 
menstruating period, which have seemed to weaken me both in body and mind. 
All the energies of life seem to be gone. But I will not dwell farther, as it only 
excites my nerves by so doing. Yours truly, A. C. 

Case of extreme Marasmus in a Virgin Female. 

Old Forge, 1859. 

Dr. Stone : Dear Sir : I have just read your advertisement in a Schenectady 
paper, and I thought I would state my case to you, hoping that you will try 
to relieve my great suffering. I would like this to be strictly private, as I in- 
tend to open my heart fully to you. 

About seven years ago I commenced the practice of self-abuse, which I kept 
up for a year, (it was a sin of ignorance,) and which brought on dyspepsia and 
all its attendant evils. About that time I began to have pains in my shoulders. 
I think as early as that, I had a slight prolapsus. I used to indulge six or seven 
times a day, and afterward it would seem as if my head would burst. I failed 
dreadfully, was poor and pale. I taught school that summer. Thoughtlessly 
(it fills me with sorrow inexpressible to think of these things, and I would gladly 
spare myself if it were possible) I brought on prolapsus and ulceration of the 
uterus. I also suffered from painful menstruation. My pains began to spread 
all over my shoulders, and from the commencement of my sickness my nerves 
were very irritable. I could not sew five minutes before my shoulders would 
pain me so that I would have to lay it aside. I was wholly unfit for labor, and 
from that time until the present did not do any thing for myself. At length I 
grew worse in every respect. My pains spread to every part, and my bones 



246 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

were so cold in winter, before storms, and pained me dreadfully, especially in 
my shoulders and knees. I feel dreadfully depressed in spirits, and suffer every 
thing in that respect. My bones would feel like ice, and pain me beyond endur- 
ance. I became very costive. 

A year ago I put myself under the care of a lady physician, who treated me 
for ulceration of the uterus. The treatment seemed to irritate my nerves. I 
took a bad cold when the uterus was in a congested state, and painful menstrua- 
tion commenced. After a month's treatment, I had a rash break out all over 
me, that was like fire in my skin. My skin seemed puffed up ; my arms looked 
a third larger than common. I took some cold while the rash was out, and ague 
set in, and then I suffered agonies worse than death — such pain and coldness 
in my bones. I was in bed, perfectly prostrated, six weeks with it. It seemed 
to be in my bones the worst. My appetite was poor. I got on my feet again, 
but had more pain than ever in my system. When I would have my periods, I 
would sweat almost to death, and had to change my clothes the first days sev- 
eral times on this account. When I was around the house I perspired so that 
if I would lay one hand on the other a moment, it would be all wet. I went by 
this lady's advice more than a year without any benefit, but I did not tell her, 
though, what I have told you ; I could not bring my mind to it. In six months 
I had the rash again. All this time I suffered the most dreadful agony. Some- 
times the pain was sharp, then dull and heavy all over my shoulders, elbows, 
and every joint of the body. I suffered such dreadful depression of spirits that 
I would think I must kill myself. This was last winter. I have thought of 
suicide, as a relief from suffering, a great many times ; I hardly know how I 
have escaped it. 

Now I want to tell you my present sufferings, and then, in the name of God, 
if it is possible for you to relieve me, do so. I feel like death ;- 1 can not endure 
as much as an infant ; I can not sew without its putting me in agony, (less pain 
when I try to labor ;) I can not be on my feet nor walk but very little ; the least 
exertion tires me out ; I have dreadful pains all up and down my back before 
storms ; my appetite is capricious ; the pains are tearing-down ones, (like the 
pains of child-birth,) and they go to the extreme end of the spine ; I have neu- 
ralgic pains in the uterus and in my ears ; I sometimes dream amorous dreams ; 
I have itching in the uterus ; my back is dreadfully weak, especially between 
my shoulders ; my knees are very weak ; my nervous system is a complete 
wreck. Do you think these aches could be the effect of calomel ? I have such 
dreadful pains this minute in my shoulders and breast, right at the nipple. My 
bowels are regular. 

Now, tell me what you can do for my case, and if you help me, God reward 
you. I am a dreadful sufferer ; I could scream in agony this moment from 
writing, and if you knew how heavy the time hangs ! I wish you could feel for 
five minutes what I do, because then you could feel for me. Whatever you 
send me I will try to pay for. 

I am twenty-seven years of age, have dark hair. Sometimes I have very 
scanty secretions of urine ; at one time the quantity did not exceed a table- 
spoonful for a day and night, and I had scalding of urine. My mouth feels 



MARASMUS. 247 

dreadful in the morning ; for more than a year I had an irritation in my throat 
when I would take cold, (it is now so all the time,) and a hacking cough. 
I must close now. I shall expect to hear from you soon. H. S. 

Old Fokge, 1859. 

Dr. Stone : Dear Sir : I have just received your letter, and it told me what 
I feared it would. Oh ! how inexpressibly sad I feel this moment, and how t 
wish I had never been born ! 

I thought when I wrote you that, if I got any thing from you that would do 
me any good, my folks might care nothing about paying it ; but my father has 
paid out so much money, without any benefit to me, that he thinks it is useless ; 
besides, he is not in circumstances to do as he otherwise might do if it was the 
first time. You see there is none of my folks realize my true condition as I 
do — I have to bear the burden alone. I have no mother to go to in my distress. 

I wish it was possible for me to see you for a while, but it is impossible, as it 
would take more than twenty dollars ; if I had it, it would go for that freely. 
If it was in the summer-time I could manage it better, as far as traveling was 
concerned. Do you wish to make a uterine examination ? What is it you want 
to see me particularly for ? If there is any way under heaven whereby I could 
do in your stead, I will do so — be it ever so distasteful to me — if you will only 
tell me how. 

I do not mean to take any more of that lady's medicine ; she used caustic for 
the ulceration, and it was that, perhaps, that caused the increased irritability of 
the uterus, for I never had painful menstruation before, except when I was first 
sick, and then not bad. Do you think my pain is of a rheumatic character, or 
is it caused by nervous debility ? I did not have so much pain until my nerves 
became so bad. I can remember that after I had indulged in that vice the pain 
would go right to my knees, ankles, and between my shoulders ; that was four 
years or more. Since I wrote you I have had some pain around my heart, and 
any little excitement increases its action ; for instance, when I received your 
book it set my heart a beating, and when the letter came I felt excited, and 
perspired some. Do you think it would be advisable to marry under these cir- 
cumstances ? Could you understand my case any better by my sending you 
some urine? For the sake of humanity, do try and do something for me. If 
you could know my condition ! What will become of me, God only knows. If 
you can devise any means to treat me without seeing me, for heaven's sake 
do so. 

I will close with many well wishes for your prosperit3 r . H. S. 

Old Forge, 185 9: 
Dr. Stone : Dear Sir : I have just received your letter ; I am obliged to you 
for it. I will send you ten dollars in this, and I hope you will do your best for 
me. I have not been as well since I wrote you as before, owing to the storms 
we have had. I have just passed a menstrual period. A few days before it, I 
had pains about the heart, (like neuralgic pains ;) I was sewing some when they 
came on. During the period I began to have pains in the chest, (after eating I 
first noticed them ;) they commenced in the left side and spread all over the 



248 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

chest ; the)' seemed to get worse every day, and at night my heart beat so that 
I could not rest easy lying down ; I felt a hysterical sort of a suffocated feeling ; 
I did not sleep good for several nights ; I suffered those dreadful hearing-down 
pains in the lower part of my back, and the same kind of pains in mj joints, 
and had pains all over. I coughed a great deal just previous to that period, and 
during the time my throat did not feel sore, yet the air seemed to hurt it ; I cer- 
tainly must have inflammation of the windpipe, or something is wrong there. I 
am over menstruating and sleep as well as usual. During the day-time I have 
suffered pain in my heart at the right side, also just at the side of the breast, but 
it changes and will be all over the chest and in both breasts to the nipple — that is 
a dull aching pain, but the one at the heart is rather sharp. My mind has been 
so much exercised at the thought of doing something for myself that it has made 
me hysterical. My appetite is very poor now, and I belch a great deal of wind. 
I never had pain in the digestive organs to speak of until now. I feel the 
changes of temperature very much. I do not go out to walk at all when the 
weather is very cold, for we have no sidewalks, and it is so cold, and I have to 
wear so many clothes that it tires me out. I feel the cold very much ; warm 
weather makes me feel much better. I sweat considerably during the menstrua- 
tion, and now if I exert myself very quick ; when I go up-stairs my breath is 
hurried and my heart beats. I can walk a half a mile when the weather is dry. 
The secretion of urine is scanty now. Please tell me how many of the chemical 
baths I would have to take and how long. I have written for some money ; if I 
get it, I will come and see you. 

Please write by return of mail. H. S. 

Old Forge. 

I was disappointed in getting the money I wrote for, but do not give up hopes 
of coming to see you. 

My symptoms are about the same. I am more convinced every day I live 
that the accursed calomel and mercury in my system is one great cause of my 
present dreadful suffering. I believe it to be the worst thing I shall have to 
contend with ; I have no faith in any thing removing it but the chemical baths. 
You know, and I know from sad experience, that I can never have relief, nor 
can my system ever be invigorated, while I have this dead weight hanging upon 
me. When the pain in my back gets some easier, I feel as if there was a heavy 
load taken off of it. Please give me some light on the subject of those baths ; 
do you think it very necessary that I should take them ? Also mention if they 
reduce a person much. Does calomel affect the bones ? or does it cause acid to 
collect under the skin and affect the nerves ? I want to know all those things ; 
every day seems a week, I am so anxious to have something done for me. I am 
almost crazy about money. H. S. 

Dear Sir : Your medicines have arrived. When I commenced to take them 
the weather was thawing, and I had great pain in my head, also in my eyes, and 
a buzzing noise in my head. Just before my last monthly I had pains in my 
uterus, like those in other parts ; my skin is dry and hot. The other day I rode 
a short distance in a wagon without a back, and I suffered dreadful pains in my 
back and all through the pelvis. There has been a snapping noise in my heart 



MARASMUS. 249 

when it beats. After I have pains in my joints, they are followed by a kind of 
itching. 

I am so perplexed and sad that I would gladly lay me down to rest in the 
grave, for I have no rest here, no happiness, and this may not be the worst. 
My heart sinks in despair, and when I reflect on myself I exclaim in sorrow : 
"When will this weary body find rest?" I will do my best to help myself; 
may the good Father aid me. H. S. 

Old Forge. 

Dear Sir : I received yours and would have replied sooner, but did not feel 
like writing. 

My menses were accompanied with much pain and weakness in my oacTc — 
that dreadful oearing-doion pain. Just as I was getting over them I had a dis- 
charge from my bowels as black as tar for four days. My right ear has been 
sore inside and out, and pained me much ; there was also a noise like the puffing 
of steam in that ear. The pains I suffer in my joints resemble those that follow 
when the arm is violently twisted, and usually occur on a change of weather. 
This no doubt proceeds from the mercury in my system ; I wish the unprinci- 
pled persons who gave it to me could suffer them ; this pain nearly torments 
the soul out of my body. I have great depression of spirits ; I feel that death 
would be a sweet release ; I feel that I have nothing to live for, and only do 
live because I can not die ; there is no rest for me on this side of the grave. I 
can not express the great sorrow of my heart — I have sorrow upon sorrow. 

Please write soon. H. S. 

CASE No. 12. 

Case of Extreme Marasmus and Early Decline. From Miss E. W. 

Dr. Stone : Dear Sir : If, after a knowledge of my case, you can prescribe 
any thing to benefit me, I shall be glad to have you do so. I think my lungs 
must be affected, they feel so badly. They feel very sore, both inwardly and 
outwardly, all around my breast. It hurts me to blow my nose or take a long 
breath, or talk very loud. They feel worse on the outside, at the side of my 
breasts, and partly on them — almost under the arm. Sometimes my chest feels 
as if it were tightened up inside. There is a fullness in my breasts that I can 
not describe. It is not pain or soreness or burning ; yet that is the nearest to 
it. It generally seems to be in the center of them. 

I have spit blood for more than a year. My lungs feel bad when I raise it. 
When I raise phlegm lately, blood is mixed with it. My throat troubles me, 
and has an oppressed, full feeling. I keep hawking and hemming, and trying 
to clear my throat. A yellowish matter, streaked with blood, seems to be in 
my throat, ready to come up. When I hawk to get up matter, it will hurt my 
lungs. I raise a whitish mucous matter. 

Monthly periods have been regular, but latterly more scanty. I perspire very 
freely on walking a little briskly. 

My limbs are very tired, and my back feels ve^r lame, and my sides feel sore. 
I have not a consumptive form, (had no relatives die of it.) My breasts are full ; 



250 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

one of them, the right one, is a little sunken in. My voice is not very strong ; 
can not sing. 

If you can do me any good, shall be glad to have you prescribe for me. 

E. W. 
Second Letter from Miss JEJ. W. 

Your communication is received. I am much worse than when I wrote you 
before. Things look dubious to me now. I am in such a bad condition, I 
never expect to be cured ; but if you can benefit me enough to be of some comfort 
and assistance to myself and friends, I desire your treatment. I am losing 
flesh and strength. My whole system seems to be exhausted. There is a 
very disagreeable feeling in the lower part of my abdomen — a bearing-down pain 
which prevents my walking very well. 

You judge correctly that the sexual organs are diseased. I have an itching 
of the genital organs, and a burning after urinating, and a sharp pain directly 
over the urinating orifice. There is a drawing and pain about the navel. My 
monthly is attended with this drawing pain about the navel. I have a creeping 
or fluttering sensation about the genitals. 

You doubtless will not wonder as to the cause of all these feelings and dis- 
orders. I am convinced that they proceed from self-abuse, commenced eleven 
years ago, and kept up more or less of the time until a year ago, when I became 
convinced of the great cause of these diseases and my great suffering. Why it 
was I can not tell, only that nature implanted it there. Since I have realized 
the vice and the sin of it, there is no failing that I have which I have tried more 
to reform. Sometimes I think if I had married young, it would have been bet- 
ter for me ; but I have no desire to marry for the sake of the gratification alone. 
I believe that higher, holier feeling should govern this bond than sensuality. 

My urine varies in color — sometimes very highly colored, depositing brick-dust 
sediment. Simply turning over in my bed, the other night, produced a violent 
palpitation of the heart. I am restless and wakeful nights ; some nights I can 
not sleep more than an hour. I have cold chills at nights. My hands and feet 
sweat a cold, slimy perspiration. I have a burning flush on my cheeks. After 
urinating, a whitish, slimy matter passes off. The reason I can not sleep well 
is owing to an uneasy fluttering feeling in the abdomen. I am generally costive. 
I have neuralgic pains in my shoulders, limbs, and points of the elbows. 

Now, Doctor, here is a truthful description of my melancholy case, which I 
unbosom to you, and what I believe to be its cause. Now in making up your 
prescription, do not write any thing in any way to lead my parents to suspect 
what has been the cause of my follies ; for I sinned through ignorance, and now 
that I see and feel its effects, it grieves me bitterly to think that one possessing 
my intelligence and endowments, should have lived to have prostrated herself 
so low by giving up to passion. Try and do your lest for me. I have the 
greatest confidence in your skill and ability. E. W. 

Mrs. Doctress Stone : All my life has been one continued struggle against 
that insidious, wily destroyer that is paling so many cheeks, and laying prema- 
turely in the grave our fairest forms. 

In my childhood, I was unfortunately placed, being obliged daily to be in the 



MAKASMUS. 251 

company of men whose outward lives of holiness effectually screened their hearts 
of corruption and their vileness from the eyes of the world. I was associated 
with such from my earliest recollections, and ignorant of their evil consequences, 
contracted those habits which are gradually but surely undermining my consti- 
tution. I was not aware of the just retribution which follows the violation of 
nature's laws until I had attained my full stature. I have long striven hard 
against these excesses, but it seems that habit is stronger than will or resolution, 
for I am not able to obtain the mastery over the impulses of a disordered sys- 
tem. I write to you, hoping, etc. S. P. L. 

CASE No. 13. 

Case of Nervous Prostration and Mental Despondency and Marasmus, from the 

same cause. 

Dr. Stone : It is with shame that I inflict on your notice these lines ; yet it 
must be done, for I am dying, perhaps, slowly but surely. Please bear with 
me, while I give you a brief sketch of myself as I now am ; and then, sir, if 
it is within your power to give me relief, I pray you do it. 

One year ago, I was a strong healthy, fleshy girl ; now I am poor. To all 
appearance, I am almost old enough to enter the " old maids' " circle, though 
my age is twenty. I do not care for society, except it be that of my intimate 
friends ; but I love solitude, getting alone where I can think and dream undis- 
turbed. Still, it does me no good, as my thoughts are always of my condition and 
what it will be ; and I sometimes think I will put an end to myself. But I have 
one to live for who is as pure as the heavens above him, and I shall exert myself 
to keep him so ; for I think that however low a woman may be, she can use her 
influence over others, either for good or evil. 

I suffer hourly from a pain in the back, finding relief only when lying down. 
My back also is quite weak, and it is sometimes covered with little pimples, from 
the shoulder to the waist. I suffer also from a loss of memory, dizziness of the 
head, palpitation of the heart, hurried breathing on ascending a hill or flight of 
stairs, etc., all of which will lead you to surmise before this the cause of my 
misery. Therefore it will be useless for me to say that it is caused by " self- 
abuse." O God ! would that such things were never known ! 

In your reply, please state which would be the safest and cheapest way to 
have my medicines come — by mail or express. 

I have read a number of advertisements, but something told me that yours 
was one of truth ; hence my determination to write you for advice. 

Miss J. A. 

CASE No. 14. 
Dr. Stone : Dear Sir : From reading your advertisement a few days since, 
being one of suffering mankind, I am prompted to consult you for relief, if such 
can be given. I have been complaining two years last spring, and had taken 
several colds the winter before. About the time I first experienced that I was 
not healthy, I was taken with a heavy, dragging sensation, much heat, and 



252 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

transparent coagulated discharges from the vagina. Although I complained 
much, my friends did not consider me sick. They little knew what I suffered, 
or I might perchance have now been well. 

I took medicines for the first year to no effect. I have felt a heavy sensation 
only after exercising, together with a feeling as if there were ten thousand strings 
drawing in so many directions through the lower part of my body and hips. At 
the menstrual period, the discharge was clotted, muddy, and much mucous, ropy 
mixture. My bowels are constipated, and at the rectum I have a painful sensa- 
tion, as if there was a string tied as close as it could be drawn — (a primitive ex- 
pression, but gives the best idea ;) and I have cold chills always after retiring. 
My eyes are weak ; I have neuralgic pains in my head and face. 

You will perceive readily what has been the cause of all my painful suffering. 
I have been the victim of a pernicious habit, little thinking of the consequences, 
until my sufferings and the reading of your valuable treatise on " Premature 
Decay," have caused my eyes to be opened to its direful effects. I am desirous 
of being cured, if there is any help for me. I am anxious to know what you 
think of my case, and if you can perfectly cure me, and what is the expense. 
My means are limited ; but I would sacrifice all, if health, through your efforts 
and the mercy of God, could be granted me. 

Please let me hear from you soon. E. W. 

The above authenticated letters describe, in the vernacular of each 
patient, what are some of the causes for Marasmus and the early 
physical degeneracy and decay so extensive among the young, in lan- 
guage more potent than we can describe or command ; for it comes 
from the very heart of each one under the stimulus of pain and an- 
guish, and inspired and dictated under a deep moral of mental emo- 
tion which the vice had produced. In transcribing these to our vol- 
ume, we have done it in good faith, maintaining the fidelity which we 
assure our patients and our patrons that we will ever keep most 
sacredly locked up in our breast. We make them public because 
they convey in language better than we can do, (even from our great 
experience in this department,) and the state of the community and its 
needs — language coming from the inner consciousness of their natures 
— the convictions of their own feelings amid pain and suffering and 
death ; and when thus expressed, it will reach others in a similar situ- 
ation more effectually than we could hope or presume to do ; hence 
we feel it to be a moral duty which we conscientiously owe to suffer- 
ing humanity and to mankind in all coming future, to publish them. 

We did, indeed, intend to go into a full and explicit detail of the 
history of the vice which those letters portray, taking it in all its 
bearings from infantile life upward to manhood, and give our views 
for the many exciting causes for its development in earlier life, as it so 
generally prevails beyond all thought and expectation of parents or 



MAKASMUS. 253 

guardians ; but we find that it is swelling this book too largely, and 
we have had to deny ourself the long-contemplated anticipation of 
publishing such here ; but shall go on as diligently as our numerous 
professional labors will permit, to prepare as perfectly as we have 
ability to do such a work in a very complete form, embodying and 
transcribing all the feelings and sufferings from many, many patients. 
In that work we shall go into the moral and social cause for the ex- 
tension of this bitter vice. We shall dwell at full length upon the 
evils of premature development and firing of that passion which 
should, as we have before expressed, have lain dormant in the consti- 
tution for years, until the physical system was matured ; and it should 
have been brought into action by a healthy stamina and vigor of the 
physical constitution itself; and not forced by a hot-bed system of 
artistic culture and lashed into fury and tempestuous storm, which 
not only threatens, but actually does submerge the mass. 

Desiring not to take upon ourself an undue amount of odium or un- 
just censure — we might more truthfully call it persecution — that our 
other little work subjected us to some years ago, which we at the 
time published as an earnest of the same conscientious endeavor 
towards a discharge of moral duty, to impart light in this dark de- 
partment of the professional field ; fearing the same now that we 
met with then, if we conveyed too much light on our own responsi- 
bility, more than some are prepared, from its frightful nature, to re- 
ceive without producing a degree of moral blindness, we prefer 
to corroborate our own opinions, therefore, by making the following 
quotations from others in the same field with us, and whose opportu- 
nities, from their great experience, have enabled them to come to the 
same conclusions : 

"A too great loss of semen weakens all the solid parts; hence 
arise weakness, idleness, phthisis, tabes-dorsalis, stupidity, affections 
of the senses, faintings and convulsions." 

Hoffman had already remarked, "that those young people who 
practice the infamous habit of masturbation lose gradually all the fac- 
ulties of the mind, particularly the memory, and become entirely unfit 
for study." Lewis describes all these symptoms : we shall translate 
from his work only what relates to the mind : " All the symptoms 
that arise from excesses with females follow still more promptly, and 
it is difficult to paint them, in colors, as frightful as they deserve. 
Young persons addict themselves to this habit without knowing the 
enormity of the crime, or the physical consequences resulting from it. 
The mind is affected by all the diseases of the body ; but particularly 
by those arising from this cause. The most dismal melancholy, and 



254 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

aversion to all pleasures, the inability to take part in conversation, 
the sense of their own misery, and the consciousness of having 
brought it upon themselves, the necessity of renouncing the happiness 
of marriage — all affect them so much that they forsake the world — 
blessed if they escape suicide." 

The symptoms mentioned in the foregoing are a perfect type of 
many of those seen in cases of masturbation, but there are others, 
more deplorable, which have been but recently discovered, as arising 
directly from it — I mean idiocy and insanity, with a total prostration 
of physical and mental power, which affect not only the unhappy vic- 
tim himself, but his offspring, and lead invariably to the extinction of 
the family name. 

It is very recently that these terrible evils have been found to be 
under our control. They have hitherto been considered as mysterious 
dispensations of Divine Providence, to be met and endured with pa- 
tience and resignation. 

Several eminent writers have already, though but recently, ac- 
knowledged the influence of self-abuse in producing insanity and idio- 
cy, with consequent constitutional degeneracy, and have urged the 
necessity of searching for their cause, in treating these evils. So con- 
vincing has this become, that it has been i*ecognized recently in a 
legislative document, which tells more wholesome truth, accompanied 
with — I was about to say — more sound reasoning than all the medical 
treatises heretofore published upon the subject put together. I refer 
to the " Report on the subject of Idiocy," presented to the Massachu- 
setts Legislature, in February 1848, by Dr. Howe, in compliance 
with a resolution of that intelligent body, directing a report upon the 
subject. 

I hope that the publication of that valuable document will be the 
means of eliciting like truths from other legislatures forthwith; for 
the influence of such documents, from such sources, will do more 
good, by preventing the unsuspecting from falling into so deplorable 
a vice, than all the asylums and medical treatment can ever do by 
way of cure. 

I feel convinced that the time will speedily arrive, when this and 
similar reports will be eagerly sought for, and their inestimable value 
freely and generally admitted. My quotations from the report will 
not only serve to corroborate all I have said and will say in these 
pages, but also to further and more fully enlighten the public. Dr. 
Howe's able, forcible, and convincing remarks, on boldly approaching 
this subject, should forever silence and put to shame all affected mod- 
esty in speaking upon this subject ; for many persons aware of its ex- 



MARASMUS. 255 

istence heretofore have been prevented from speaking out respecting 
it by this false modesty. 

" There is another vice, a monster so hideous in mien, so disgusting in fea- 
ture, altogether so beastly and loathsome, that in very shame and cowardice, it 
hides its head by day, and, vampire-like, sucks the very life-blood from its vic- 
tims by night; and it may, perhaps, commit more direct ravages upon the 
strength and reason of its victims than even intemperance ; and that vice is 

SELF-ABUSE. 

" One would fain be spared the sickening task of dealing with this disgusting 
subject; but, as he who would exterminate the wild beasts that ravage his 
fields, must not fear to enter their dark and noisome dens, and drag them from 
their lair, so he who would rid humanity of such a pest as this, must not 
shrink from dragging it from its hiding-places, to perish in the light of open day. 

" If men deified him who rid Lerna from its hydra, and canonized him who 
rid Ireland of its serpents, what should they do for him who should extirpate 
this monster vice ? What is the ravage of fields, the slaughter of flocks, or 
even the poison of serpents, compared with that pollution of body and soul, 
that utter extinction of reason, and that degradation of beings made in God's 
image, to a condition which it would be an insult to the animals to call beastly, 
and which is so often the consequence of an excessive indulgence in this vice ? 

" It can not be that such loathsome wrecks of humanity as men and women 
reduced to driveling idiocy by this cause, should be permitted to float upon the 
tide of life without some useful purpose ; and the only one we can conceive is, 
that of awful beacons to make others avoid — as they would eschew moral pollu- 
tion and death — the cause which leads to such ruin. This may seem extrava- 
gant language, but there can be no exaggeration — for there can be no adequate 
description even — of the horrible condition to which men and women are re- 
duced by this practice. There are, among those enumerated in this report, 
some who not long ago were considered young gentlemen and ladies, but who 
are now moping idiots, idiots of the lowest kind, lost to all reason, to all moral 
sense, to all shame, idiots who have but one thought, one wish, one passion, 
and that is, the further indulgence in the habit which has already loosed the 
silver cord, even in their early youth, which has already wasted, and, as it 
were, dissolved the fibrous part of their bodies, and utterly extinguished their 
minds. 

" In such extreme cases there is nothing left to appeal to — absolutely less 
than there is in dogs and horses — for they may be acted upon by fear of pun- 
ishment, but these poor creatures are beyond all fear, all hope, and they cum- 
ber the earth awhile, living masses of corruption. If only such lost and helpless 
wretches existed, it would be a duty to cover them charitably with the vail of 
concealment, and hide them from the public eye, as things too hideous to be 
seen ; but, alas ! they are only the most unfortunate members of a large class. 

" They have sunk down into the abyss towards which thousands are tending. 
The vice which has shorn these creatures of the fairest attributes of humanity 



256 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

is acting upon others — in a less degree indeed, but still most injuriously — 
enervating the body, weakening the mind, and polluting the soul. 

" A knowledge of the extent to which this vice prevails would astonish and 
shock many. It is indeed a pestilence that walketh in darkness, because while 
it saps and weakens all the higher qualities of the mind, it so strengthens low 
cunning and deceit, that the victim goes on unsuspected in his habit, until he is 
arrested by some one whose practiced eye reads his sin in the means he takes 
to conceal it, or until all sense of shame is forever lost in the night of idiocy, 
with which his day so early closes. 

" Many a child who confides every thing else to a loving parent, conceals this 
practice in its innermost heart. The sons and daughters who dutifully, con- 
scientiously, and religiously confess themselves to father, mother, or priest, on 
every other subject, never allude to this ; nay, they strive to cheat and deceive 
by false appearances ; for, as against this darling sin, duty, conscience, and re- 
ligion are all nothing. They even think to cheat God, or to cheat themselves 
into the belief that He who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, can still 
regard their sin with favor. Many a fond parent looks with wondering anxiety 
upon the puny frame, the feeble purpose, the fitful humors of a dear child, and 
after trying all other remedies to restore him to vigor of body and vigor of 
mind, goes journeying about from place to place, hoping to leave the offending 
cause behind, while the victim hugs the disgusting serpent closely to his bosom, 
and carefully conceals it in his vestment. 

" The evils which this sinful habit works in a direct and positive manner are 
not so appreciable, perhaps, as those effected by it in an indirect and negative 
way. 

" For one victim whom it sinks into the depths of idiocy, there are scores and 
hundreds whom it makes languid and shame-faced, irresolute and inefficient 
for any of the higher purposes of life. In this way the evils to individuals and 
the community are very great. 

"It behooves every parent, especially those whose children (of either sex) are 
obliged to board and sleep with other children, whether in boarding-schools, 
boarding-houses, or elsewhere, to have a constant and watchful eye over them, 
with a view to this pernicious and insidious habit. 

" The signs and symptoms of it are easily learned ; and if once seen, should 
be immediately noticed. Nothing is more false than the common doctrine of deli- 
cacy and reserve in the treatment of this habit. All hints, all indirect advice, 
all attempts to cure it by creating diversion, will generally do nothing more 
than increase the cunning with which it is concealed. The way is to throw 
aside all reserve, to charge the offense directly home ; to show up its disgusting 
nature and hideous consequences, in glowing colors ; to apply the cautery 
seething hot, and press it into the very quick, unsparingly and unceasingly. 

" Much good has been done of late years by the publication of cheap books 
upon the subject ; they should be put into the hands of all youth suspected of 
this vice. They should be forced to attend to the subject. There should be 
no squeamishness about it. 

" There need be no fear of weakening virtue by letting it look upon such hide 



MAKASMUS. 257 

ous deformity as this vice presents. Virtue is not salt or sugar, to be softened 
by such exposure ; but the crystal or diamond that repels all foulness from its 
surface. 

" Acquaintance with such a vice as this — such acquaintance, that is, as is 
gained by having it held up before the eyes in all its ugliness — can only serve to 
make it detested and avoided. 

" Were this the place to show the utter fallacy of the notion that harm is 
done by talking or writing to the young about this vice, it could perhaps be 
done by argument, certainly by the relation of a pretty extensive experience. 
This experience has shown that in ninety-nine cases in a hundred, the existence 
of the vice was known to the young, but not known in its true deformity ; and 
that in the hundredth, the repulsive character in which it was first presented, 
made it certain that no further acquaintance with it would be sought. 

"There are cases recorded where servant-women who had charge of little 
girls, deliberately taught them the habit of self-abuse, in order that they might 
exhaust themselves, and go to sleep quietly. This has happened in private 
houses as well as in the alms-houses ; and such little girls have become idiotic. 
The mind instinctively recoils from giving credit to such atrocious guilt ; never- 
theless it is there with all its hideous consequences; and no hiding of our eyes, 
no wearing of rose-colored spectacles — nothing but looking at it in its naked 
deformity, will ever enable men to cure it. 

" There is no cordon sanitaire for vice ; we can not put it into quarantine 
nor shut it up in a hospital ; if we follow its existence in our neighborhood, it 
poisons the very air which our children breathe." 

The abtfve remarks forcibly apply to all our public schools, for I 
have become too well acquainted, I was about to say, Avith the alarm- 
ing extent with which it prevails, often even in the most open man- 
ner. The extent of it is amazing, for it exists both among the teach- 
ers and the students, and what can be more absurd than the partial 
even shunning of the subject? By so doing, it leads not only to the 
continuance in some but the production of it in the yet uninitiated. 

" From this may be inferred that it is a pest, generally engendered by too in- 
timate association of persons of the same sex, that it is handed from one to an- 
other like contagion, and that those who are not exposed to the contagion are 
not likely to contract the dreadful habit of it. Hence we see that not only pro- 
priety and decency, but motives of prudence, requires us to train up all children 
to habits of modesty and reserve. Children, as they approach adolescence, 
should never be permitted to sleep together. Indeed the rule should be — not 
with a view only to preventing this vice, but in view of many other considera- 
tions — that, after the infant has left its mother's arms, and becomes a child, it 
should ever after sleep in a bed by itself. The older children grow and the 
nearer they approach to youth, the more important does this become. Boys 
even should be taught to shrink sensitively from any unnecessary exposure of 
person before each other ; they should be trained to habits of delicacy and self- 
17 



258 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

respect; and the capacity which nature has given to all for becoming truly 
modest and refined, should be cultivated to the utmost. Habits of self-respect, 
delicacy, and refinement, with regard to the person, are powerful adjuncts to 
moral virtues. They need not be confined to the wealthy and favored classes ; 
they cost nothing ; on the contrary, they are the seeds which may be had with- 
out price, but which ripen into fruits of enjoyment that no money can buy." 

There is no tyranny more complete than the one absorbing passion. 
For wise and benign purposes the great Author of our being has seen 
fit to implant in the human breast, and more deeply in the organism of 
man, the sexual passion than all others, for the wise purpose solely of 
perpetuating the species. When properly used and rightly cherished, 
it is the source of all social enjoyment. It entwines in sacred compact 
the domestic circle, and weaves around the hearthstone of every true- 
hearted, intelligent individual the tie and sublimity of virtue. It gives 
a true zest to life, and sets before us at the dawn, as it were, of our 
existence, on a prominent pinnacle, the mainspring to all true human 
action here ; for when thus laudably prized it becomes a noble stimu- 
lus to industry ; for it embodies at once, in the thought and magnitude 
of its name, the inducements and acquirements that will confer on us 
the comforts and possession of a home. 

But, on the other hand, when perverted and unguided by reason 
and moral control, it becomes the very rock on which thousands make 
shipwreck, both of life and of happiness here. It is the morbid in- 
dulgence of this passion, and its untimely and undue development, that 
at length engender a diseased influence on the organism of the victim, 
which subject his mind, his reason, and moral control, to its tyrannical 
sway, that he has thoughtlessly and unguardedly cultivated and devel- 
oped in himself, fired by the allurements of false ideas of pleasure. 
The indulgence of the passion was commenced in the thoughtless and 
inconsiderate years of childhood, for want of having had impressed 
upon the tender mind the most important of all principles of a true 
moral and physical culture, which parents are too prone to neglect to 
impart to their children, from false notions and conceptions of pride 
alone ; and, for want of true humility of soul, allow their offspring to 
be thrown into the vortex of life, unguarded by any chart or compass 
to guide them securely through the conflicts of the passions lying in wait 
to ensnare tbem. Silently and insidiously, then, in many an unthought- 
of moment, and many an unsuspected hour, and many an unguarded 
day, on the part of the parent and the guardian, is the child and the 
youth firing his nature by the one diseased passion, until, at length, he 
begins to feel its direful effects in his constitution like some poignant 
sting. He then attempts an effort at extrication, but finds that he has 



MARASMUS. 259 

bound himself with a cord too strong to be severed. The genius of 
Correggio has embodied in a masterpiece of art this very idea, that 
shall endure for all coming time — portraying the victim of temptation, 
of lust, and of sensuality, in which three female figures are represented 
ministering to a man who sits fast bound to a root of a tree. Sensuality 
is soothing him ; Evil Habit is nailing him to a branch ; and Repug- 
nance, at the same instant of time, is applying a snake to his side. In 
his face is feeble delight, the recollection of past, rather than the per- 
ception of present pleasure ; languid enjoyment of evil with utter im- 
becility to good — a Sybaritic effeminacy — a submission to bondage — 
the springs of the will gone down like a broken clock ; the sin and suf- 
fering coinstantaneous, or the latter forerunning the former — remorse 
preceding action — this represented in one period of time. For its 
beautiful moral effect, some time since we had a copy made of this ad- 
mirable painting and engraved for our books, believing that it would 
be useful in awakening reflection, and inducing a reform ; and we are 
highly gratified on learning from many sources of this anticipated be- 
nign result. Many victims who have found themselves deprived of 
health, with their shattered, broken-down constitutions, while yet in 
early life, with enfeebled minds and dejected spirits, have written us 
with the conviction of being bound to " this tree," imploring our aid 
in doleful language. 

We would say, then, to those that shall read this section, while yet 
on the threshold of life, in the language of Doctor Johnson : "Let us 
therefore stop, while to stop is in our power ; let us live as men who 
have some time to grow old, when it will be the most dreadful of all 
evils to correct our past years by follies, and to be reminded of our 
former luxuriance of health only by the maladies which riot has pro- 
duced." 

It may be truly said, the disasters consequent upon the imprudencies 
and the intemperance of youth, become useful monitors only when in- 
dulgence has blunted the keen edge of passion, or satiety has incapa- 
citated us for enjoyment. 

Our professional situation, and the nature and extent of our practice 
in this modern field of humiliating maladies, impart to us the import- 
ant light of the magnitude of this confession. Such also appeared the 
cases of those that called forth the following replies: 

REPIiY TO MR. D. D. R. 

Troy, N. Y., January 11th, 1862. 
Dear Sir : I am in receipt of yours of the sixth inst, which I have carefully 
read with great care and profound interest. 



260 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

Yon call upon mc to prescribe for and cure you of Seminal Emissions, which 
I prescribed for some 3 r ear and a half ago. You say my remedies helped you at 
the time. You ask us to spare no pains, and that you regard no expense to 
have them cured. We like this noble indication on your part to pay for our 
labors, for there is none that labor more arduously, or strive more determinedly, 
than we do to cure our patients. 

Under this proposition we will make one exertion, and will commence by re- 
peating what you say — " that our remedies helped you for the time." Now, 
here is your great mistake — like all those, with some very few exceptions, that 
we have occasion to prescribe for, (and their numbers are not small, we assure 
you) — that is, you lay all the stress of cure upon so much medicine. But we 
begin rightly with every patient that we prescribe for, and conscientiously en- 
deavor to disabuse their minds from the very start, that there neither is omnipo- 
tence nor health in medicine ; that medicine, discriminately given and judicious- 
ly applied, is all very well to assist the constitution to overcome the irritation 
and derangement in some of the organic functions, but medicine can do no more, 
especially in this very intricate and mysterious class of maladies that emanate 
from affections of the sexual organs. 

We know, from more than thirty years' experience in the healing art, that 
there are no class of maladies that have such direful and prostrating effects upon 
the souls and bodies of mankind than those that have their seat in the sexual 
organs. Especially so is this the case with males, for none but those who 
have been victims to and felt the awful prostration, the despondency and de- 
pression of spirits, the blasted hopes and prospects of life, which follow their 
phenomena, can realize it. The effects of this disease upon its victim can neither 
be told by tongue nor described by pen, hence we do not wonder that you, set- 
ting out as it were from the threshold of human life, with so many flattering 
prospects before you, are desirous of being cured of such an appalling malady. 

But, let me tell you, my friend, if you look to medicines alone for a cure, you 
will look in vain. This has been your great fault. What, then, do you ask me, 
will cure seminal emissions ? You will understand that all this secretion, exha- 
lation, or emission from the male sexual organs, denominated seminal emissions, 
are secreted in this wonderful apparatus, and in order to cure the emissions we 
must stop the secretion or the generation of this inordinate effusion. But how, 
I ask, is this inordinate secretion brought about ? In the first place, all the 
fluids that are secreted in the body are secreted through their proper glands — 
it matters not in what organ or membrane the fluids may be secreted, they are 
secreted through their appropriate glands. Hence, the male sperm and the 
fluids secreted by the sexual organs take place in the testicles and glands that 
line the seminal vessels. Now, these seminal vessels are wonderful in extent, 
amounting to one hundred feet and more, and serve not only to convey the 
spermatazoa on from the testicles, but also secrete in themselves a wonderful 
amount of fluid, when in a morbid condition, which causes their great debility 
and prostration. 

Now, it will be understood, that no gland in the body, when in a state of 
health, and not unduly stimulated by artificial stimuli, secretes more fluid than is 



MAKASMUS. 261 

essential for the performance of its own legitimate function. To illustrate this, 
look at the tobacco-chewer, who keeps the salivary glands in a continued state of 
artificial excitement by tobacco. They are stimulated to an inordinate secretion 
between meals, which is neither healthy, necessary, nor designed by nature, and 
which he continually has to spit away, keeping up a constant drain upon the 
blood and juices of the body back of these glands, weakening him and the 
powers of the digestive organs by denying the stomach of this healthy fluid, 
which, under other circumstances, would be secreted for its healthy and legiti- 
mate use. Can you not see, then, its applicability to the testicles and sexual 
organs ? God, in designing the sexual organs of the male, designed them for 
one of the noblest purposes of our being. "What was that ? He designed that 
their function, in infancy and early life, should lie dormant, grow, and gain 
strength, and be developed proportionately with a good, sound, physical body 
or organism, and that when they arrived at years of maturity these sexual 
organs should be used prudently, occasionally. For what purpose ? For that 
specific purpose of propagating our species, our immortality, to untold genera- 
tions yet unborn and for ages yet to come. 

But here let me stop to ask you, my friend, are the sexual organs of man- 
kind generally, and the American race in particular, used for this end ? "Were 
they only used for this end, and for this purpose which God designed, would 
there be an inordinate secretion ? Would the secretion of the testicles and their 
appurtenances run into that morbid condition that now, alas ! drains off their 
very existence and life-blood daily ? Why, then, this morbid or inordinate 
secretion ? For the very reason, my friend, that this glandular, secreting appa- 
ratus has been brought into action prematurely, a continued, morbid excitement 
artificially has been kept up upon them from our infancy, and long years before 
they should have been excited or brought into action at all, and then, when ex- 
cited, should only have been so by the natural orgasm or strength of the body. 
Can you not see, then, that this inordinate secretion by the testicles and glandu- 
lar male apparatus, which secretes so inordinately, is stimulated unduly to this 
secretion by the passions ? which serve to these organs what tobacco does to the 
salivary glands of the mouth and throat. What consistency would there be in 
the inveterate chewer of tobacco, who has got dyspepsia or indigestion, to all 
the untold horrors of the blue devils, by the inordinate secretion of the salivary 
glands, and the spitting away of the juices of the body, if he should call upon 
me to prescribe medicines to cure dyspepsia and check the inordinate secretion 
of the salivary glands, instead of stopping the use of tobacco, which is constant- 
ly keeping it up-? Or what consistency, on the other hand, would there be in 
my attempting to cure him without first telling him that dyspepsia and its con- 
sequent horrors have been caused by tobacco, and that my medicines and treat- 
ment will be entirely unavailing unless he cuts off the cause, (tobacco ;) then, 
perchance, if he does so at once and forever, thus stopping this artificial excitement 
and irritation of the glands, which are now draining off the juices of the body, 
provided there be vital stamina sufficiently remaining in his system, and the 
functional diseases which have been caused thereby have not resulted in organic 
or structural diseases, as is too often the case from the use of tobacco, there 



2(32 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

mav be a chance of curing him by medical aid. Can you not see, then, that it 
would be very inconsistent to attempt to cure this long train of physical ills in 
the tobacco-chewer if he did not break off the exciting cause ? Is it not equally 
as absurd to look to medicines for aid to check an inordinate secretion of the 
sexual organs, and that is kept up by the passions of the mind, back of the 
physical organism, without a firm control over these passions to prevent the 
inordinate or artificial excitement of these organs ? Now, were the sexual 
organs kept in a healthy condition, without any inordinate stimulation or arti- 
ficial excitement of the passions, there never would be any more secretion than 
the seminal vessels would be able to contain and dispose of in the natural, 
legitimate manner above alluded to. 

But we admit that we find now, as we find with all cases of this class, that 
your sexual organs are in that very morbidly excitable condition as we find the 
nerves and mucous membranes of the stomach and the salivary glands of the in- 
veterate chewer of tobacco. The organs, then, being in this morbidly excitable 
condition, the reservoirs for containing these fluids, which have been secreted by 
the continued artificial excitement of the passions, have not strength, tonicity, 
power, or contractability sufficient to contain it after it is secreted, hence the 
seminal vessels being in this very weak or debilitated state, and the nerves and 
sexual organs being in this exaltedly irritable and excitable condition, can you 
not see that they are continually acted upon by this constant excitement to this 
inordinate action, to pour out this undue secretion that you call Seminal 
Emissions ? 

Is it not plain, then, that before this debility or want of contractility and 
tonicity in the seminal vessels or reservoirs can be strengthened, the inordinate 
excitability of the sexual nerves must be overcome and allayed ? How can this 
condition be obtained by simply applying medicines, locally or constitutionally, 
if the inordinate excitement or artificial stimuli is continually kept up behind 
this in the mind and in the passions, and continually inflaming those passions ? 
How inflaming the passions ? Through the medium of your brain and nervous 
system. Therefore, my friend, it is evident that, before I or any medical man 
can cure you, that you have got to control your passions as I have directed 
you before ; you have got to be chaste in thought, word, and deed, in order to give 
rest and quietude to the organs, before they can be strengthened or this morbid 
condition removed. The passions must be quelled and governed — how? — by 
reason, judgment, and the moral will. For, let me tell you plainly, that 
the passions of the human mind or body do not exist in the reasoning fac- 
ulties, which should constitute our guide and be our helmsman, and sit as 
our umpire. Where do they exist then ? I answer this important question 
thus : That they are not always under the influence or control of reason ; that 
they have their function instinctively in the cerebellum — in the back brain — and 
not in the cerebrum or upright brain, not in the anterior lobes, where lie percep- 
tion, reflection, reason, and the moral faculties, which, when all combined, and 
equalized, and properly used, form the umpire, the helm as it were, to guide us 
aright through this " vale of tears." 

Let me give you a wonderful lesson in the science of man, human life, and 



MARASMUS. 263 

existence here. There are certain functions carried on in this physical organism 
that are not under the control of the voluntary nerves, that are controlled and 
governed by a set of nerves that are not under the guidance of our will. God 
has been too gracious, too bountiful in his mercies to his offspring to leave this 
physical life in the hands or under the control of us short-sighted mortals. Had 
he done so, my friend, how soon would this organism become deranged, its 
machinery be thrown out of its gearing, and our physical existence be wound 
up! All the great organs of the body that carry on the great vital forces and 
functions are not left to be governed by our short-sighted reason. If they were 
so, in our slumbers the heart would cease to beat, the lungs would cease to 
respire and perform their wonderful function, and, instead of waking up next 
morning and finding ourselves tenants of this little tabernacle, we should, per- 
chance, wake up outside of the body, and, looking down upon it, wonder how 
all this came about ; or, when we were enraged at our adversary, in a fit of 
passion, those organs that carry on their great vital functions would stop in one 
moment, and we would be thrown out of physical existence by the indulgence 
of this passion. Ah ! my friend, it would be well if you and the rest of man- 
kind could see this as I do. 

The sexual function is an instinct of our nature. It belongs to the animal 
part of our nature, just as it does in the lower animals precisely ; and man, with 
all his boasted intelligence, with all his reason and the sublimity of his flights 
in the aspiration of his hopes, embodies in this faculty no more than the brute 
of the field. If it is not governed by the loftier, nobler principles of his nature, 
(reason,) what is he ? is he any thing more than the brute of the field ? No, he 
is not so much, I answer ; for the Lord God has been merciful to the brute, 
and, where he has not given reason for his umpire over those passions to hold 
them in check, he has provided the unerring laws of instinct for his guidance. 
But he has been more merciful to man, and, in place of the unerring law of 
instinct, he has given him the more ennobling faculty of reason to guide him 
aright in regard to this propensity, and to keep it from being his self-destruc- 
tion. But how does man use it ? Let me ask you if the Anglo-Saxon race, if 
the American race now, (generally speaking,) use it as consistently as the brutes 
do ? You may answer that question. You are but an individual and know 
the feelings and impulses of your nature ; you know the sufferings, prostration, 
and despondency that you feel individually; but I, as a physician, "appointed 
by God a priest of the holy flame of life, a curator and dispenser of his highest 
gifts — life and health — and of the powers which he has laid up in nature for 
the welfare of man," know this much from experience, that they do not ! 

Well, let me come to the point, then, after this lengthy and scientific digres- 
sion. You ask me to give you medicines to cure you. I honestly confess that 
I can do so only conditionally. I have admitted that medicines are all right 
enough in their place — that they serve, when judiciously given under a right 
discrimination, to fulfill certain intentions, namely, to aid the constitution to 
overcome the inflammation and irritation of the sexual nerves, and to bring the 
sexual passions more easily under your control. Further than this they can 
not do ; but they will do this when the conditions are right. How shall the 



261 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

conditions be right to overcome this morbid irritation, and to have this undue 
excitability and secretion of the sexual organs corrected, and cause them to 
perform their natural function ? I answer that with the lucidness that I have ex- 
plained to you — the sexual passion being in part an animal instinct, given toman 
to be controlled entirely by reason, and not by an unerring law, as in the brute 
creation. I contend, then, that you, and all this class of patients, are so situated 
that before they can be cured by medicines, they have got to first bring to bear 
the exercise of reason, judgment and self-control over those passions, which are 
but a fire that fans the flame to burn them up. How ? By inordinate sexual 
excitement and drain upon the whole constitution, through their sexual organs. 
Then, before I can cure you, you have got to control the sexual passion ; to 
subdue it in your mind, so that the body, or the sexual organs, shall not feel 
the direful effects of this over-indulgence and over-stimulation. When you do 
this, and do it long enough to give the medical agents, and the absolute laws of 
hygiene, time to act upon and recuperate the vital forces, then you will be 
cured, and not till then. 

But I must make this more clear to you. You ask me, like thousands of 
others, to give you something powerful enough to stop this inordinate secretion. 
I answer, that before the secretion is stopped, the stimulation to the nerves, 
which governs the function of the gland, must be stopped. Well, you ask in 
the same voice, give me something to do that. To do this I must give you 
something that will act upon your immortality — your mind — which is back of 
your body or physical organism — which keeps up this inordinate stimulation 
and excitement upon the secretory glands and testicles. Through what ? 
Through the medium of the nervous system and the brain ; and that is the 
battery that you have set in motion by the passions, which passions exist in 
the mind— the immortality ; and you instituted them by your will, by allow- 
ing the instinct of your nature to govern the sexual organs, and get the upper- 
hand of your reason and moral faculties. If I should give you a potion so 
quieting, so narcotic, so stupefying in its nature, as to quiet all this excitement, 
that you call upon me to do, then it would be so powerful in its effects that it 
would wind up the machinery of this wonderful mechanism that constitutes your 
animal existence. The mind in which these passions exist would have to sever it- 
self from the physical organism. Why ? Because your will has been suspended by 
the stupefying influence of this dose, which you have implored me to give you so. 
strong that it would kill the passions themselves, as far as their effect upon the 
sexual organs is concerned. But have I killed your passions by this quieting 
dose of medicine or opiate, that you ask me to give you, which I admit 
allays the excitement for the time ? I doubt it very much ; because the pas- 
sions, as I have already said, exist outside of the body ; they are part of your 
immortality, and they will follow you into the future state of existence. You 
will wake up outside of the body, and find that you possess the same passions 
that you did while in it. Then you and every one will see yourselves in your 
nakedness, as it were, standing upon a sea of glass, and find, when too late, I 
fear, that these passions, which so deranged your body and destroyed your 
health, produced so much despondency and depression of spirits, such blasted 



MARASMUS. 265 

hopes, such fears, anxieties and forebodings while in the body, have followed 
you into the spirit-world, outside of the body. You will then learn why your 
health was destroyed, and all the suffering entailed while in the body was but 
an abuse of the wonderful and mysterious faculties of your nature that God 
gave you for a wise and noble purpose. Ah ! but the fault is with this class of 
victims that implore our aid. The quieting agents that nature affords and art 
possesses, are not sufficient in their nature to do all this without your aid — 
without the aid of reason and moral control ; but require a dose so strong, so 
potent, as to cause their physical body to slumber in that inertness so sound 
that nothing but the voice of the Creator, when he calls on the morning of the 
resurrection, will be powerful enough to awake them from their slumbers. The 
passions of this class of victims are all-potent, from the want of self-government ; 
their thirst is so intense that nothing but a river can quench it. Ah ! it has 
filled their earthly temple with diseases so dire, so morbid, so corrupt, that 
nothing but Lethe can wash them away. Yours very truly, 

Andkew Stone, M.D. 



Tkoy, N. Y. Feb. 9, 1862. 
REPLY TO MR. C. A. B. 

Dear Sir : I am in receipt of your favor of the sixth instant, which I have 
carefully read. You say you have had six nocturnal emissions since you com- 
menced my treatment, and, from the dates given, they seem to occur perfectly 
periodical and regular ; that your bowels are prone to be confined, so that you 
have had to increase the dose of " Oxygenated Bitters" to twice the quantity in 
order to move them daily ; that you have also had to increase the dose of " Sele- 
nium Pills " to keep down the sexual passion ; that your appetite is so exten- 
sive that were you to satisfy it, you would overload your stomach and bowels 
to your great injury, and to the excitement of the passions, and to the producing 
of emissions, as you must know ; that you have a great desire for eggs, oysters, 
high living and luxuries, and you wish to know if you must use them, when, as 
you ought to know, in your condition, having nocturnal emissions from excess 
of vitality and want of physical exhaustion sufficient to equalize the fluids of the 
body, and draw off their preponderance from the sexual organs — which principle 
is clearly laid down in the Hygienic Rules — you must know, if you reasoned at 
all, that such a diet would do great mischief to you ; for it would keep up the 
cause continually while you were looking to medicines to relieve the effects 
which you are continually causing. 

Now, I must say to you that you, like every other patient that comes to us for 
treatment, can neither see God Almighty, his laws of life and health in any thing 
else but medicines, pills, and potions. Now, just so long as you do this, my 
young friend — just so long' as you will not reason, or study the laws that govern 
the sexual passion, and that also govern health, and observe them — if you will 
not study to equalize the forces of the body by continually doing nothing in the 
way of physical occupation — then you will look in vain to medicines for a cure 
of seminal emissions. 



2(36 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

"When we prescribed for you, we only gave you the Tonics, as a slight cor- 
rective and laxative, to aid the functions of the stomach and bowels gently ; 
likewise the "Drops" to blunt the excitability of the sexual organs ; also the 
printed " Hygienic Rules and Conditions of Cure " as clear as the English lan- 
guage could express them in every particular. In the first place, we explained 
to you that the causes of these emissions that you have, and that nearly every 
person has, is in the mind — in giving up to indulgence and excessive action of 
the passions which exist in the mind — in the immortality — and so long as they 
are indulged, and not brought under the control of the moral will, they will 
have these pernicious effects upon the sexual organs. Mind you here that those 
emissions are but the consequence of this burning fire of passion in the immor- 
tal part of your structure — behind the body. If you can not control your pas- 
sion by reason and the moral will, you will look in vain to medicines for a cure. 
You may go on and take quarts of tonics, drops and narcotics, stupefying the 
brain and nervous system — and all will be in vain if you do not use some con- 
trol morally over the passions and endeavor to draw off the preponderance of 
this excitement to the sexual organs. You will ask how ?• Why, I have told 
you in print as plain as plain language could express it. 

Furthermore, in the rules we gave you we dwelt upon constipation, over-eat- 
ing, late suppers, hearty eating, late drinking at night, and all the other con- 
comitant causes and excitements that keep up the effects thereby pointed out 
in print to you, and in writing also. By carrying out these injunctions, you 
will avoid those concomitant causes, and when you do this, you will recover, 
and our medicines will do all that medicines can do. 

Will you not understand that when a morbid condition is instituted in the 
system, be it in the sexual organs and their functions, or any other organ of the 
body," from one primary prominent cause, though that first cause may be re- 
moved or overcome yet — when this condition or effect is produced, it becomes 
a law secondary in the constitution, and may be kept up by a thousand other 
causes very different from the first primary cause, namely, self-pollution, or in- 
ordinate development and excitement of the passions, which passions, as you 
will understand, exist in the mind — in the immortality — and have produced 
this effect on the physical organism. 

Now you must study your own case, and trace these effects, namely, noc- 
turnal emissions, to their immediate exciting causes, as has been pointed out to 
you, and always avoid those approximate or sustaining causes in order to break 
off these effects, or, in other words, to remove the instituted or artificial law or 
habit of the system ; when this is done the cure is certain, but can not be ob- 
tained until this morbid habit or condition is overcome by a rigid observance of 
the hygienic rules or absolute laws of health which govern your being and 
which we have sought to point out to you in the printed rules and the rules 
that we gave you. 

Just so long as you think that health is a haphazard, a chance commodity, 
and you live as the Apostle expresses it, " as you list " — eating every thing 
drinking every thing, at unseasonable hours or in improper quantities, and in an 
improper manner, pandering to your propensities and passions, allowing your 



MARASMUS. 267 

mind to dwell on the lower plains of our animal nature, instead of developing 
the superior God-like faculties of the mind, and elevating the divinity of your 
nature above the animal, and abrogate and repudiate all law, then you will 
have no health ; for be it understood that health is the result of obeying the 
supreme law, to which you should bow with homage and reverence. 

But just so long as you do not look to the removal of the causes — the first 
exciting cause of the passions, and then the concomitant causes and physical 
abuses, which have been enumerated — then medicines will not produce the de- 
sired effect. For what do you gain, my friend, by taking medicines simply, 
from day to day, to relieve certain effects, if you do not remove the causes of 
these effects ? That is the question. You can take an indefinite quantity of 
tonics, drops, and narcotics, and you will never get well until you strike at 
the root of the evil. You will ask how are you to do this ? Why do you want 
this over and over again, when you have it in a plainer manner in print ? Read 
the first chapter on the moral causes, where T tell you that there are three great 
counter-balancing antagonizing principles in the human system ; and when a 
person has seminal emissions, they result from a preponderance of these princi- 
ples, and that you must allay and draw off these excitants from the sexual or- 
gans — then the medicines will be effectual. 

Again, before you will ever get cured, you will have to keep the mind and 
body engaged in some occupation that will give not only exercise to all the mus- 
cles, organs, and functions of the body, but divert your mind also from your 
passions, and, at the same time, daily fatigue your body sufficiently to get good, 
sound, refreshing sleep. 

You are also to observe the modes of going to bed, of sleeping, of getting up, 
and of living — then you will get over your emissions. But so long as any 
young man like yourself, who has nothing to do, no occupation for the mind or 
body, but living, as it were, while yet on the threshold of human existence, a 
life of inactivity better suited to its close — rusting prematurely for the want of 
healthy exercise or employment — he will murmur to his God in vain, and curse 
himself for his existence instead of Him. 

You may think I talk plain — I mean to talk plain — for the only way to reach 
people to open their eyes is, by appealing to their sensibilities and their reason, 
if they have got any ; and when we can not reach folks by mild means, then 
we must beat it into them with a sledge-hammer. If you understood it as I do, 
from years of physical suffering and experience, gained by gray hairs, that 
every pain you feel in your physical body is a benign monition from Almighty 
God that you have violated his laws, that govern your being morally and physi- 
cally, then, my friend, you would study those laws and revere them, and if you 
do so, life, health, and happiness shall be yours. 

Yours truly, Andrew Stone, M.D. 

Note. — The anxious parent will have, doubtless, a prudent degree 
of solicitude to know what are the more prominent marks or symptoms 
which denote unmistakably upon the constitution those direful results 
which we have thus far labored to illustrate, that they may discover 



268 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

the timely preventive or remedy : Lassitude, languor, indication of 
failing strength or debility ; flabby state of the muscles, and a wasting 
of the same and all the tissues of the body ; sallow or pallid counten- 
ance and pale lips ; sunken eyes which have dark circles around them, 
and the lustre of which has given place to a dullness or deadness ; 
downcast, retiring or desponding look, and want of confidence to look 
you in the face ; disposition to solitude or retirement, and expressions 
of despondency and discouragement ; peevishness and fretfulness ; 
great restlessness, inability to remain long in one place; great inability 
to fix the attention upon one subject or to commit to memory ; failing 
memory, especially for facts or dates ; aversion to society, and a melan- 
choly and despair on the part of the invalid, and, if quite sick, no hope 
of recovery ; spots before the eyes ; ringing and buzzing of the ears ; 
eyelids and eyes watery ; blur before the eyes in the morning, with 
gumming up of the eyelids ; weak eyes, especially before candle or gas- 
light ; dryness of the nose, or running, watery matter from the nose ; 
often a wildness of the eyes, and a wandering look, or else fixed or 
vacant stare which is noticed by every one ; pimples and blotches on 
the face of an unsightly character ; constant collection of phlegm in 
the throat ; shortness of breath ; wandering pains in the chest; some- 
times loss of appetite, but often er a very voracious and aggravating 
morbid appetite, and sense of burning and gnawing at the stomach ; 
sense of sinking or fainting at the stomach before, and distress and 
oppression after eating meals ; costive state of the bowels, perhaps al- 
ternating with diarrhea ; dull pain in the small of the back ; great 
weakness, after walking or labor, in the region of the left kidney ; con- 
stant desire to pass water, but little passing at a time, with difficulty 
in expelling the last drops — or else free flow of urine like water ; some- 
times, however, the urine is very highly colored and of an offensive odor, 
depositing a brick-colored sediment, or sediment full of mucous, muddy, 
or milky color, especially the last indications when the digestive or- 
gans are much deranged. As the evils progress, great shortness of 
breath becomes manifested on the slightest exertion, on ascending a 
hill or flight of stairs ; more or less palpitation of the heart, often to 
an alarming extent ; great nervous weakness and prostration, and 
irritability of the nervous system, and disposition to start or be fright- 
ened at the least jar, the sudden opening of a door, or entrance of a 
person upon the victim. As the effects upon the constitution progress 
further, coldness of the hands and feet with cold chills or rigors, alter- 
nated with feverish excitement and flushed state of the countenance, 
and a determination of blood to the head becomes manifested. Fetid 
breath and disgusting exhalations from the skin are among the more 



NOTE. 2(39 

prominent features attending the evil effects of the vice spoken of. 
Other cases will manifest great chagrin and anxiety, with desire to 
weep ; afraid of being left alone ; extreme sensitiveness ; difficulty of 
thinking and attending to mental labor; headache, as from a deranged 
stomach ; sadness even to loathing of life ; fall pulse, and heat in the 
face and head, or icy coldness of the whole body ; sleeplessness, with 
restlessness; excessive flow of ideas; extreme sensitiveness of the ear 
to noise ; excitement of the passions intense, generally of short dura- 
tion, but approach even to insanity ; involuntary discharge of urine 
day and night; tottering gait in walking, and weakness even unto 
trembling ; imaginary fears, and exaltation of all the mental and moral 
faculties, suddenly followed by a deep depression and relaxation of the 
whole system, dullness of the mind, stoppage of one's thoughts at once 
when endeavoring to communicate an idea; weak memory; light 
and unrefreshing sleep, full of frightful dreams, causing the invalid to 
awaken with a start, and anxious beating of the heart at night ; con- 
stant uneasiness about one's health ; disgust of life, and disposition to 
commit suicide, and, at length, a great emaciation of the whole body. 

The above are only a small enumeration of the anomalous symptoms 
which are the result of self-abuse or violation of the laws of life in some 
generally obscure though dangerous and fatal tendency. The symptoms 
are so variable in nearly every case, so Ave have suggested in our little 
work, that the late learned Dr. Marshall Hall, of London, wrote some 
years since a volume on these symptoms, entitled Mimosi^ which is a 
correct word, meaning imitator, because they imitate every other 
form of disease. 

But we have enumerated enough to cause every thoughtful person 
subject to such symptoms, or every thoughtful parent having a child 
characterized by them, to feel under the deepest anxiety for judicious 
counsel and proper medical aid, which can only be found with those 
who make this a department of their study and practice. 

We treat many hundreds of children, and many in youth and middle 
age even given to this class of maladies, annually, and generally with 
extraordinary satisfactory results ; for the treatment adopted by our 
Institution is based upon correct principles, evolved by a thorough in- 
vestigation into the physiology, pathology, and history of each case. 
Furthermore, the treatment is such that it is not necessary to see the 
patient in but very few. instances, eliciting by printed interrogations 
the peculiar nature and requirements of each case ; so that we can 
send them remedies by mail or express, and treat them with perfect 
success at their own homes. 



270 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 



Of the Treatment and Cure of Consumption, 

The interested reader of our brief volume will approach this section, 
especially if he be an invalid or a consumptive, with much hope, and 
probably with much fear. Hope, in the first place, because he has al- 
ready been inspired to anticipate in the preceding chapters an evi- 
dence of thus realizing something more substantial in the way of relief 
and restoration from this direful malady than the medical profession 
generally has been wont to afford. With fear and trembling, lest the 
promise of relief and cure that science and art now proffer, in their 
new discoveries in cold medicated inhalation for the cure of this dire- 
ful malady, which has ever conveyed a sickening and heart-rending 
sound to every ear connected with its melancholy issues, may not 
prove as real and substantial as promised. 

Truly, it is a melancholy reflection that a class of diseases which 
spreads its ravages in every country and in every clime, and that has 
hitherto consigned to the tomb one third of mankind, should have been 
so imperfectly understood, so little investigated, and so unskillfully 
and unscientifically treated. We do not intend to pour any unjust 
anathemas or unmerited insinuations or condemnations against the 
profession, which embodies in its annals literature most learned and 
most scientific, so far as it pertains to the origin, the etiology, symp- 
toms, prevalence, and fatality of many epidemic and contagious dis- 
eases. But we act upon this principle, that medicine, like theology 
and her kindred or sister sciences, should be subjected to criticism of 
the most rigid character, and whatever is found to be erroneous and 
attended with dangerous consequences, as now published or proclaimed 
to the world, deserves condign exposure and condemnation, and should 
at once and forever be discarded. It is a wise maxim that every thing 
that will not stand the highest test of reason should not be received, 
but should be rejected. 

We live in an age in which the community generally and every in- 
dividual, to a certain extent, thinks for himself; heretofore, (and we 
regret to say it is too much so at the present time, with certain classes 
cr in certain communities) a few only have done the thinking for the 



ITS TREATMENT AND CURE. 271 

mass. It has been so in the church. It has been so in medicine, until 
within a very few years. So much so in medicine, that the power 
wielded by the faculty assuming to themselves dogmas, creeds, and 
enactments of an arbitrary nature, — banding themselves under strin- 
gent canons to protect each other, in their arrogant and bigoted 
notions, that they really carried their tyrannical influence to a most 
alarming and dangerous extent. 

These dangerous principles and doctrines in medical practice ob- 
tained their popularity or influence, like religion, in the darker ages 
of the world ; and like the Church at one period, certain creeds or no- 
tions only could be published, believed, and spoken of, without danger 
of persecution — the stake and the fagot ; so at that period the grossest 
notions in medicine were found in the hands of the priest. As the 
science made a little more progress, it assumed to itself the power, 
under its then present popularity, of being protected by statute enact- 
ment and law, as did the Church, to prescribe quicksilver, arsenic, and 
deadly poisons to mankind by law, so also to bleed and to blister, and 
to adopt many other crude and barbarous notions of practice respect- 
ing the cure of disease, which were they to now practice to the extent 
that they formerly did, the physician would be arrested and tried for 
manslaughter daily. Such has been the arbitrary influence wielded by 
the old school of medicine, that one who does not adhere to these no- 
tions or belong to their creed, at the present day is spurned, and pro- 
nounced to be an empiric. To this class (the old school) belongs the 
melancholy, withering, and blighting notion of the incurability of pul- 
monary consumption. 

To read through all the treatises on Pulmonary Consumption that 
have been written by the old-school system of medicine, and the treat- 
ment that has been adopted for the same, it leaves us without wonder 
to know why pulmonary consumption has ever been considered incur- 
able in their hands. What would any good common-sense person, 
outside of the ranks of medicine, think of a physician that would now 
undertake to cure a delicate and consumptive female, or male even, 
by bleeding them? But small and frequently repeated bleedings 
were advised, together with blistering extensively over the chest. If 
general bleeding was not directed, which was the usual course, leech- 
ing or scarification or cupping was adopted as its substitute ; and as 
a substitute for the old painful process of blistering with Spanish flies, 
sores were made with tartar emetic ointment or croton oil, or both ; 
or setons, or perpetual issues, were kept open, draining the patient's 
life-blood away. In addition to this prostrating, devitalizing, painful, 
and barbarous system of practice for Consumption, we have recom- 



272 ITLMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

mended in the books frequent emetics, with the idea of causing the 
tubercular deposit from the lungs to be thrown out in some myste- 
rious manner which the books do not explain, by giving emetics by 
the stomach. The reader will bear in mind that the lungs are breath- 
ing or respiratory organs only, and that nothing can reach them direct- 
ly only by respiration or breathing. But the emetics were given by 
the stomach, as they generally give every thing in that department of 
practice. In addition to the emetics, frequent laxatives and powerful 
purgatives were also combined. Salivation by mercury, blue pill, or 
the different preparations of mercury, calomel, corrosive sublimate, 
oxymuriate of mercury, have been extensively recommended and 
adopted. The body has been saturated by small and repeated doses 
of Fowler's solution of arsenic, or some other preparation. 

At length this most barbarous system gave way, under its lack of 
success ; and the great fatality of the disease, its continued increase, 
stimulated other minds to new inquiries. Colchicum, digitalis, and 
iodine, each in turn, was then recommended at different times by the 
old school as a specific for Consumption. But after these remedies 
had received an extensive and thqrough trial in every part of the 
world, without ever being the means of arresting the progress or 
curing even one case, the faculty at length, as the reader and the com- 
munity well know, pronounced pulmonary consumption to be perfectly 
incurable. 

As the reader has already been advised, it is only within about 
thirty years since the days of Laennec, who, with a few other generous 
and noble minds, was stimulated to a new investigation and new in- 
quiries into the cause and nature of Tubercular Consumption, that new 
light dawned upon this seemingly fatal disease, and new hope was pro- 
claimed through them to the world. Laennec, Louis, and Andrall in 
France ; Bailey, Monroe, Mills, Scuddemore, Corrigan, Flood, Forbes, 
Hastings, Watson, Clark, and Carswell in England ; Stokes in Dub- 
lin ; Parish, Morton, Girard, Sweet, and others in our own country, 
were all stimulated by a most laudable zeal to new investigations, as 
we have before said, into the nature and cause of Pulmonary Consump- 
tion. Laennec and most of the other men above named witnessed at 
the di -section-table numerous instances of evidence in the lungs of 
patients that had died of some other disease, by accidental death, old 
eschars and wounds that had healed in the lungs; and they at once 
drew the natural inference that nature, when not thwarted by those 
deadly and prostrating medicines, and when sustained in her own re- 
sources, and the patient adopted a rational course of hygiene, living 
consistently with the absolute laws of health, was all-sufficient, in many 



ITS TKEATMENT AND CUKE. 273 

instances, for the healing of the ulcers or abcesses in the lungs which 
had hitherto been deemed incurable or out of the course of nature. 

At this period the great researches of Liebig, a German chemist, 
brought to bear, in harmony with the enlightened physicians before 
mentioned, his new discoveries in animal chemistry, proving the cause 
for tubercular deposit in the lungs. The reader will bear in mind, that 
up to this time, the learned medical fraternity of the old-school system 
of practice for centuries, had never studied what was the cause for the 
condition of the blood that put the deposition of these granular bodies 
into the air-cells of the lungs. They never had thought, nor given 
any investigation, that these granular bodies found in the lungs, which 
at length ulcerate and thereby consume the lungs, were the result of 
a defective process in digestion and assimilation, and a defect on the 
part of each individual patient in his diet and modes of living, that 
gave rise to the morbid condition of the blood, which eventually car- 
ried this morbid deposition to the delicate structure of the lungs by a 
combination of vitiated and confined air, which Liebig's doctrine, in 
coincidence with the intelligent observation of those men, proved it 
to be. Liebig's investigations proved this, that in order to have good 
health and strength, and to sustain the body, two great classes or 
forms of diet were absolutely necessary. First, the plastic, or that 
kind of food which builds up the tissues of the body. Second, that 
which was necessary to keep up the combustion in the system, called 
non-nitrogenous or combustible elements, which are composed of 
starch, sugar, butter, cream, and animal oils, which are carbon. Lie- 
big proved that it was a neglect of the use of the non-nitrogenous, 
carbonaceous, or fatty substances, necessary to unite with the oxygen 
of the atmosphere which we breathe to keep up the requisite combus- 
tion in the system, that caused this morbid or effete accumulation in 
the circulation to be left unburnt or unconsumed, hence its deposition 
in the shape of tubercles in the lungs. 

Reasoning upon these observations and these scientific discoveries, 
it was easy to perceive that whatever was adopted in the form of 
medication to relieve the diseased condition of the lungs, must be m- 
haled, must be breathed ; that it should be brought in immediate con- 
tact with the diseased matter and the diseased condition, and that 
only could be done by breathing or inhaling, for the lungs are re- 
spiratory organs alone, and that nothing to reach the lungs directly 
could be administered' by the stomach; hence, this led to the dis- 
covery of the new system of medicated inhalation. 

But before we go further in illustration and explanation of the im- 
portance of this benign discovery for the curability of Consumption, 
18 



274 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION". 

we will ask the question for the benefit of the intelligent reader : 
What are tubercles ? Tubercles are only impure, unburnt carbon, 
formed in the lungs from an unhealthy or abnormal condition of the 
blood, the blood being surcharged with incombustible or impure car- 
bonaceous compounds, which are made to form in the blood by 
defective nutrition. 

The intelligent reader will perceive, then, that two great principles 
of cure must be adopted — both by the lungs, by breathing or inhal- 
ing oxygen in its purity, and such medicines as have a strong affinity 
for oxygen, to consume the unburnt carbon in the shape of tubercular 
deposit now in the lungs, and that also back in the circulation, con- 
stantly disposed to further deposition ; while, in the second place, due 
regard must be given to the correction of bad digestion and assimila- 
tion — to the correction of every derangement met with in the diges- 
tive apparatus. It may not be in the stomach in one case in ten. The 
stomach, we know, is the receptacle for the food, and where, mainly, 
the first process of digestion commences, excepting deglutition and 
the consequent salivary secretion in the fauces, which, in fact, is the 
first commencing process, and a very necessary one. 

The appetite may be healthy, and the patient's stomach capacitated 
to receive a due amount of food without oppression, or any immediate 
indication of functional derangement ; but there may be aside from 
this an organic or functional derangement in the liver also, in the 
pancreas, two glands which aid vastly in the process of healthy diges- 
tion and assimilation. Again, the morbid defect may be in the duode- 
num, or little stomach, where the chyme is carried from the great 
stomach to form into chyle — the last process of sanguification, or 
blood-making, before it enters the blood-vessels. Here it receives both 
the pancreatic secretion and the biliary secretion from the liver, as 
well as the gastric secretions from the stomach, with the chyme that 
has been prepared by it. The duodenum is also furnished with glands 
for the purpose of carrying on a healthy secretion to aid in the further 
process of chylification and sanguification. Often the impaired nutri- 
tive function is situated in the duodenum. 

But the process of digestion and assimilation does not end here — 
it but barely commences. It is carried through the duodenum into 
the smaller intestines, which are furnished with glands to pour out an 
appropriate fluid to mix with the chyle ; and it is in the course of its 
march through the smaller intestines that it meets with the chyliferous 
ducts and vessels with open mouths ready to imbibe it, or absorb it 
up, and carry it into the circulative system to nourish and build up 
the tissues of the body. 



ITS TREATMENT AND CURE. 



275 



But what is the condition when chyle finds its way into the smaller 
intestines? It is just this — as has been proved by Flood, Bennett, 
and many other learned physiologists who have had the practical op- 
portunity of witnessing hundreds of cases after death by dissection 
— that the morbid derangement was situated in the duodenum and 
smaller intestines, and the mesenteric glands of the bowels, which was 
the primary cause for Tubercular Consumption. 







Our aim being to make our work intelligible, and, at the same time, 
convey to the reader correct notions of physiology, we insert here a 
cut illustrative of the digestive organs above spoken of. In our prac- 



276 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

tice, therefore, we do not rely exclusively, by any means, upon medi- 
eated inhalation, however valuable and curative it has proved in our 
hands. We give medicated inhalation for the specific purpose of dis- 
solving the tubercular deposit in the lungs, and causing it to be ab- 
sorbed or expectorated. In the next place, we give such remedies, in 
the shape of vapors, as serve to soothe and quiet the irritable condition 
of the nerves, made so by the diseased action that has been going on 
in the lungs — first, by sub-acute or chronic inflammation, and then 
the ulceration. 

These vapors are so prepared and compounded as to meet every 
want, and every morbid condition of the lungs — both to soothe and 
to quiet the irritation and the irritability, and the raw and inflamed 
parts ; and again to stimulate the ulcerated or sluggish parts of the 
lungs to put on a more vital action, and bring them into a condition 
for nature's resources to heal. At the same time that we administer 
medicines by vapors and inhalation, the digestive and assimilative 
functions are not overlooked ; proper remedial treatment is adopted to 
remove the morbid condition of these organs, both through the me- 
dium of the stomach and by external local applications. The diges- 
tive and assimilative functions being found in a state of debility or irri- 
tability, or some one of these organs above named being more or less 
diseased, either by chronic inflammation or loss of nervous force, such 
gentle, mild, soothing, invigorating tonic or alterative treatment is 
adopted as essential to the restoration of their healthy integrity. 

The intelligent reader can not help perceiving how opposite and 
how different from the old-school doctrines of practice is the treat- 
ment that we have used with such success in curing vast num- 
bers of cases of Pulmonary Consumption. There is nothing either 
of a debilitating or irritating nature found in our prescriptions. Every 
one of the old-school mineral poisonous agents are entirely discarded, 
from conscientious convictions of their great injury. Even blistering 
and irritation by croton oil, or any other poisonous or acrid agent, we 
entirely discard and disapprove of. Instead of reducing the patient's 
strength, as ever has been the course of treatment adopted by the 
old school, we study, with most scrupulous regard, to support and 
maintain all the strength of our patient. Instead of administering the 
most nauseating syrups and compounds by the stomach, as ever has 
been the old-school practice, now the mildest agents are simply ad- 
ministered by breathing or inhalation. 

You will bear in mind what constitutes tubercles in the lungs, 
namely, carbon. And what is the only agent that can consume car- 
bon ? It is oxygen ; and that we administer not only by medicated 



ITS TREATMENT AND CURE. 277 

inhalation, but "by the most rigid instructions to the patient how to 
breathe it in its utmost purity, both out of doors and in-doors, having 
a due regard to ventilation for the purpose of causing the tubercular 
carbonized deposition to be consumed or dispersed, either by expec- 
toration or by absorption. 

The invalid and the consumptive will pause and read the statement 
again and again, and reflect upon the opposite modes of the two sys- 
tems of practice ; bearing in mind that all curative agents for that 
disease in the lungs are given by inhalation. 

In the second place, when we do give medicines by the stomach, 
which we frequently do, they are not of the old-school class of reme- 
dies, combining mineral poisons and other sickening, debilitating 
agents ; but they are such remedies as are indigenous to our own coun- 
try, of the vegetable kingdom, selected with great care, and concen- 
trated with the nicest art by the pharmaceutist, in a minute and 
untainted form, so that the smallest quantity becomes a requisite 
dose, with all proper regard to a nice discrimination and adaptation 
of the right remedy to each case, for the purpose of restoring the 
prostrate nervous energies ; for in all cases of Consumption, we not 
only find extreme nervous debility, but we find this condition also — 
a loss of balance between the circulating system and the function of 
the lungs, and between the circulative system and the nutritive func- 
tions of the digestive organs. The most scientific, discriminative, and 
vigorous treatment is adopted, therefore, to remedy each and all of 
these conditions of the patient. 



The Maimer of Administering Medicines by Inhalation. 

The cool system of medicated vapors, in the first place, we wish 
our readers, and the invalid who may be much interested in knowing, 
to understand that the system of medicated inhalation that we make 
use of at our Institution is a discovery and combination peculiarly our 
own. It is true that the first suggestion was made some years ago, 
by the late learned Dr. Marshall Hall, of London, namely, to adminis- 
ter the vapors in a cool manner at the ordinary temperature of the 
patient's room,- instead of administering them in hot or boiling water, 
known as the Warm System of Medicated Inhalation. 

It is very true that there are many cases where vapors should be 
administered in the shape of steam in hot water, or near boiling. 
These cases are only such as combine . acute inflammation, and acute 
catarrhs that affect the lining membranes of the throat, the fauces, the 



278 PULMONAEY CONSUMPTION. 

Larynx, trachea or windpipe, the bronchia, and also the air-cells of the 
lungs, known as pneumonia, or pleuropneumonia. 

AY hen we are called to treat a case of acute inflammation of the 
respiratory organs and the lungs, we always give vapors warm in the 
shape of steam, for then they are more soothing, and act as a greater 
emollient to calm the excited or inflamed condition of the parts, and, 
to use a medical term, produce a cure by resolution or the reduction of 
the inflammation. It is, we repeat, in this class of cases, namely, 
acute or sub-acute inflammations, that the warm medicated vapors 
alone are suitable, and only suited to such cases as are confined in- 
doors, for the most part ; for the very reason that, if they are given 
in chronic cases, after the acute inflammation has passed into a chronic 
stage, and the excited condition of the parts has become allayed, they 
constantly dispose the patient to take on colds, and to the renewal of 
his disease by an acute attack. We found these to be their attendant 
contingencies daily for more than ten years, that we used them in our 
extensive practice. The complaint, in innumerable instances, from 
our patients was, that though the vapors helped them for the time 
being, yet the subsequent mischief from taking colds on going out 
after inhaling, was attended with greater disadvantage than the benefit 
derived from their use, until we were compelled to lay them aside, 
under such circumstances, and to adopt the cold system of medicated 
inhalation that we now make use of. 

The cool system of medicated inhalation is entirely devoid of all 
liability or danger to take cold after inhaling the vapors. 

In the next place, the advantages of inhaling the cold vapors are 
fifty-fold greater than the hot vapors. The cool vapor is always 
ready, and is evaporated by the ordinary temperature of the room, 
and the volatility of the substances we make use of, which are readily 
diffused and carried into the lungs, and every part of the respiratory 
apparatus, the bronchial tubes, and the most minute air-cell, by breath- 
ing them with the atmospheric air in its utmost purity, either in- 
doors or out. 



Mode of Inhalation of the Cool Medicated Vapors. 

The Inhaler that we make use of is a small globe, open at one end, 
which contains a small piece of nice soft sponge. Upon this sponge 
in the globe is poured two tea-spoonsful of the vapor. This is suffi- 
cient for a dose to be inhaled all through the clay — say four times a 
day. At the other end of the globe is attached a piece of tubing about 
fourteen inches in length, and at the other end a glass or ivory mouth- 



ITS TEEATMENT AND CUKE. 279 

piece. The patient holds the globe-inhaler horizontally in his hand ; 
while the mouth-piece is placed in the lips, he inhales or breathes the 
vapor in with the natural inspiration, carrying the vapors along with 
the oxygenated atmospheric air into the lungs ; he breathes the vapors 
naturally, as we have before said, as he breathes for the purpose of in- 
haling the atmosphere. We direct the patient, at the first commence- 
ment of inhaling, to use the inhaler about fifteen or twenty minutes 
only, taking that many inspirations or a few more, taking care to 
breathe gently and easily, but deeply, into the lungs, not too ruggedly 
at first, for fear of producing too great a mechanical distension of the 
air-cells, and causing soreness thereby. But after the patient has 
practiced inhaling in a gentle manner a week or a little more, he 
should increase the time up to thirty minutes for each spell of inhaling. 
The proper time for inhaling the vapors is in the morning, half an 
hour or so before eating, on an empty stomach, before dinner, and be- 
fore tea, or just before retiring at night. In aggravated cases, how- 
ever, where there is much irritation and irritability of the throat 
or respiratory organs to be overcome, we direct to inhale six or 
eight times a day, at intervals of an hour or two, but only to 
take five or ten inhalations at each time. This is done for the pur- 
pose of more gradually and gently soothing the irritable condition of 
the lungs and air-passages. We direct the patient, when not using 
the globe-inhaler, to set it in a tumbler, as it Avill always fit in one of 
an ordinary size ; it will be safe in such a position, while it saves the 
vapor. About once a week or so, the sponge should be taken out of 
the globe, and all the old vapor it contains should be squeezed out of 
it, so that it may more readily take fresh vapor, and the vapor be 
more sensibly felt in the lungs to produce the desired results. 

For the most part, the same sponge will do for each vapor. But in 
aggravated cases, where there are different results to be obtained — 
namely, first to quiet the cough ; again, to cause free expectoration, 
in case of great confinement of the mucous secretions in the air- 
passages ; or, in case of too free expectoration, and we wish to give 
an astringent vapor, one entirely opposite from the expectorant or 
soothing vapor — then a separate sponge, or globe-inhaler and sponge, 
should be kept purposely for the expectorant and for the astringent 
vapors. Due caution should be had to these points. 

Our system of cool medicated inhalation affords other very strong 
and permanent advantages ; namely, most subjects of laryngitis, bron- 
chitis, and, in fact, Tubercular Consumption, are among those who 
wish to travel, who should be in the open air as much as possible. 
Many of them are able to do light work, and follow some moderate 



280 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION". 

employment ; yet they should carry on the inhalation at the same 
time, and this affords such, therefore, the great advantage of taking 
their inhaler in their pocket, well charged with vapor, which will last 
them the entire day or more. The patient is not troubled with the 
boiling of water, or the necessity of being furnished with a large 
warm- water globe-inhaler, and an alcohol-lamp to keep up the tem- 
perature underneath it, as in the warm system of medicated inhala- 
tion. 

In the next place, the cool system of medicated inhalation used by 
our Institution possesses far greater advantages in a curative point of 
view over the warm system, inasmuch as it affords us the opportunity 
of giving such medical agents as have a greater affinity for oxygen, 
and embody greater solvent properties for dissolving the tuberculiza- 
tion in the air-cells of the lungs, and on the mucous surfaces of the 
air-passages, thereby causing free expectoration of that morbid mate- 
rial which is filling up the air-tubes and the air-cells of the lungs, exclud- 
ing oxygenated atmospheric air, and keeping up, so long as this con- 
dition of things exists, the tubercular formation back in the circulation, 
for want of oxygen to carry on the process of combustion that we 
have above explained, according to the indications of each case, or 
stage of each case. 

First, the Expectorant Vapor ; second, the Balm, or Soothing Va- 
por, for the cough ; third, the Tonic, or Alterative Yapor ; fourth, the 
Astringent Vapor ; fifth, the Anti-Spasmodic, or Asthmatic Yapor. 

If the lungs and respiratory organs, or the bronchial tubes, seem to 
be choked up and confined, and the patient is troubled with difficulty of 
breathing, the Expectorant Yapor is made use of, for the purpose of 
dissolving the tough mucous secretion which lodges upon the lining 
membranes of the air-passages or air-tubes, and, as it were, closes 
them up from its viscidity or toughness. The Expectorant Yapor has 
the power of dissolving this viscid secretion, and causing it to be freely 
expectorated from the lungs. Patients speak in the most unqualified 
approbation of the striking beneficial results received under such cir- 
cumstances from inhaling the Expectorant Yapor. 

In the next place, where the patient is troubled with an obstinate 
cough, the Balm, or quieting vapor, is given at bed-time at night, or 
at such times in the day as the cough is troublesome. The Balm, or 
Soothing Yapor, is compounded, as the name implies, from such ano- 
dyne and nervine agents as are calculated to soothe and quiet the irri- 
table condition of the nerves of the bronchia and the lungs. One of 
the most striking benefits is seen here in administering medicines in 
the shape of inhalation. The most obstinate cough which may harass 



ITS TREATMENT AND CURE. 281 

the patient, and deprive him of sleep, can be mitigated or quieted in 
a little time by inhaling this vapor, and save the stomach from being 
sickened by nauseous syrups of squills, ipecac, opium, paregoric, and 
such like materials that have been hitherto relied upon. 

The Tonic and Alterative Vapors are given to introduce into the 
blood such elementary materials, by breathing or inhaling them, that 
possess power to change the morbid condition of the blood and vital 
fluids, by introducing into the circulation those nutritive principles 
which the system has suffered so much for, which, were they given 
entirely by the stomach, would frequently be repulsed or rejected, 
from the already irritable condition which the stomach is found to be 
in. The Tonic Vapor is given to strengthen the lungs — it invigorates 
their nerve-forces. In these vapors we introduce many new discovered 
balsamic preparations, which have a wonderful effect in stimulating 
the sluggish and ulcerated surfaces and caverns, rousing the absorb- 
ents, and bringing the parts into healthy condition for the vital forces 
to heal. 

The Astringent Yapors are given in those cases where the secretions 
from the lungs or the bronchial mucous surfaces are very profuse, at- 
tended with a thin, glairy mucous, which serves to drain off the albu- 
men of the blood, reduce the patient's strength, and prostrate his vital 
energies. These profuse secretions can be kept in check, or suppressed, 
just as may be desired for sanitary purposes. 

The Anti- Spasmodic, or Asthmatic Vapors, are especially given for 
Asthma, and that difficulty of breathing denoted by a great irritation 
and irritability in the nerves of the lungs, and the nerves distributed 
to the bronchial mucous surfaces. It is well known that Asthma is a 
spasm of the muscles of the bronchia. Some morbid condition of the 
digestive organs, the liver, the diaphragm, or the blood, exists in all 
such cases, as to cause great irritation in the nerves leading to the 
wind-pipe and respiratory organs. The most inveterate case of Asthma 
can be relieved by inhaling these Anti-Spasmodic Vapors. The author 
has himself, as he has before named, twice been subject to the most 
severe attacks of spasmodic Asthma. So intense was his suffering, 
for a little time, that he nearly suffocated for want of air ; but he was 
almost instantly relieved after inhaling these vapors. He has given 
them in hundreds of instances in his practice, with the same instanta- 
neous effects, to relieve the phenomena. 

Before leaving this subject of medicated inhalation for the cure of 
diseases of the respiratory organs and the lungs of every name and 
nature, we should say something in regard to a change of climate for 
the cure of Consumption, so generally recommended by practitioners 



282 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

of the old school, who have ever looked upon Consumption as being 
incurable under any system of treatment known to them ; they have, 
accordingly, on being consulted by patients far advanced- — to save 
themselves from the stigma or the censure of not being able to do 
any thing — indiscriminately recommended such consumptive invalids 
to abandon their homes, and resort to some foreign clime, with the 
idea of finding a cure in a change of atmosphere, which they them- 
selves, in their limited knowledge of the healing art, are not able to 
give, feeling themselves entirely incompetent to meet the emergency 
of the case in which they were consulted by any remedial means known 
to them. 



Change of Climate unnecessary and highly injudicious. 

"We have already alluded to this inhuman custom on the part of 
such physicians in the opening sections of the book, therefore we shall 
have but little to say in regard to the change of climate, which we 
condemn. We never advised it ; for Tubercular Consumption is a dis- 
ease which prevails in every country and in every clime. Even under 
the balmy and clear skies of Italy, Consumption is almost as prevalent 
as in the United States ; so in France ; and so in most all other civil- 
ized countries of the globe. To expatriate one's self from his coun- 
try, to leave his home and encounter all the privations attending such 
a sacrifice, often leaving behind his dearest friends, is highly inju- 
dicious, and in doing so, instead of realizing a cure, generally his dis- 
ease is so far advanced that he never returns, but dies in a foreign 
land, unattended by a friend or a relative, to smooth his passage to 
the tomb, and render those consolations which, under such circum- 
stances, he so keenly feels the need of. 

It is sufficient for us to say that the most skillful and experienced 
physicians, who have been brought up, and had experience in their 
own persons — Sir John Forbes, Sir James Clarke, and other eminent 
medical men — now entirely condemn it. 

All the benefit that can be obtained by a change of climate is pro- 
duced by the effect of travel — the journey, the excitement attending 
it, the change of scene which appeals directly to excite hope and in- 
spire courage in the patient — and not from the climate itself. Our 
experience, which has been great in regard to a change of climate in 
our own person, and in our own practice, leads us to maintain that all 
the benefit that can be derived from going abroad in regard to a 
change of climate, the breathing of a softer and more balmy atmos- 
phere, can be obtained at home in one's own residence, by medicat- 



ITS TREATMENT AND CURE. 283 

ing the atmosphere, as we have before explained, where we have illus- 
trated the Medicated Air-Chamber with the appropriate cut. 

The atmosphere of the patient's room can not only be made as soft, 
but more balmy and congenial to the diseased condition of his lungs 
and respiratory organs, to saturate them with medicated vapors, than 
can be found in any tropical or foreign clime. Aside from this, he 
possesses all the immunities and social privileges of his own home and 
fireside, which are sacrificed on leaving ; saying nothing about the 
severe pecuniary tax and great expense which only a few invalids are 
able to defray. We contend, further, that, with due regard to the 
hygiene of clothing and dress, in suitable flannels and furs, the con- 
sumptive can exercise in the open air nearly every day throughout the 
winter, with entire impunity from liability to the rigors of our climate, 
or of colds, provided he always goes out with a Respirator over his 
mouth — which he should never fail to wear. By adopting this 
precaution against liability of breathing the cold air, which other- 
wise would obtain, the atmosphere is tempered and warmed to the 
natural standard of the blood before it enters the lungs ; thereby all 
liability to congestion, irritation, and inflammation and colds is re- 
moved. 

It will not be out of place here to refer to many of our own patients 
that have been cured amid the rigors of our Northern winters, contin- 
ually exposing themselves daily, and passing through an entire winter 
without a cold or relapse, when they were so far advanced in the last 
stages of Tubercular Consumption that caverns had formed in their 
lungs. "When Ave first saw them, we apprehended every liability from 
their remaining at home during the winter. We refer to the case of 
Mr. Otis Walker, of Sherburne, Vt., for one ; and we could mention 
many others, but it will be more satisfactory to the general reader for 
us to name some distinguished individual who has received some ben- 
efit by adopting these prescriptions, remaining at home, and exercis- 
ing in the open air during the entire winter. The distinguished liter- 
ary writer, N". P. Willis, has cured and restored himself from the last 
stages of Tubercular Consumption, in which he had bled at the lungs 
severely several times. It is not necessary, therefore, for any one 
under the improved methods of treatment that medical science and art 
now afford, to abandon home, and resort to a foreign clime. 



281 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 



Exercise in the Open Air becomes highly Essential to the Cure of Tubercular 

Consumption. 

The neglect to obtain fresh air is the rock on which invalids and 
consumptives make shipwreck. We have endeavored throughout this 
work, in the preceding sections, to show that the cause for Tubercular 
Consumption is the depriving one's self of pure air ; in-door confine- 
ment, sedentary occupation, to the great neglect of proper ventilation, 
so much so, that the large mass of the American people are perfectly 
poisoned by breathing vitiated and confined air. As Tubercular Con- 
sumption is caused, therefore, by excluding the pure air (oxygen) from 
the lungs, to deprive one's self of it becomes certain death. We do not 
object, therefore, to our patients going out in the coldest day of winter, 
when the atmosphere is not damp and the weather is not inclement ; 
but he must go out well guarded and prepared against the liability to 
cold ; but go he must in the open air, in order to breathe the pure 
oxygen, to expand the lungs, and cause a perfect combustion of the 
carbon. This carries on and promotes the process of cure, at the 
same time that it generates the heat or temperature of the body ; for, 
be it understood, that animal heat is generated by the consumption of 
the carbon of the blood, through the medium of the lungs, in the same 
way that heat is radiated from coal or wood when consumed by the 
atmosphere. 

But it makes a material difference how the consumptive takes his 
exercises in the open air. Above all other modes, horseback exercise 
in the open air stands preeminent ; for it arouses the circulation of the 
blood more thoroughly and perfectly than can be done in any other 
way consistent with his strength, and throws the blood to the surface 
with increased impetus ; the heart is made to act with more force, the 
circulation is carried on more perfectly, and internal congestions and 
obstructions are overcome and relieved. The circulation being aroused 
so perfectly, the blood is carried through the lungs oftener, so that an 
increased amount of oxygen is inhaled. The lungs, therefore, receive 
strength and vitality, and are nourished by the new vital principle 
received from the blood, and caverns are made to heal. 

We have found in our vast experience in directing our patients, who 
are harassed with an irritable cough, to exercise in the afternoon and 
evening in the open air, and breathe deeply into the lungs, that it 
would act better than any anodyne to quiet the cough and produce a 
refreshing, sound night's rest, which would not otherwise have been 
obtained. Mr. Willis mentions the same coincidence of effect in his 



ITS TREATMENT AND CURE. 285 

own person — of being able to relieve a severe irritable cough that 
would return every evening, were it not for his daily ride. We, there- 
fore, recommend horseback exercise beyond all other methods. Of 
course, where the patient is so situated that he can not command the 
advantages of a horse, gestation, or exercise in an open carriage will 
be of benefit, but the exercise is passive compared with that on horse- 
back. He should take gentle exercise on foot, as far as he is able, 
daily, leaving off inside of fatigue, when not able to command it on 
horseback. 

The eminent Sydenham extolled horseback exercise in language of 
enthusiasm : " In fine, how desperate soever a consumptive may or is 
esteemed to be, yet I solemnly affirm that riding is as effectual a 
remedy in this disorder as bark in the intermittents ; provided the 
patient be careful to have his sheets well aired, and to take sufficiently 
long journeys." 



The Treatment of Consumption by External Application to the Skin. 

We have mentioned that the practice consisted much in blistering 
the chest, making an extensive counter-irritation over the lungs with 
irritating ointments, croton oil, or by issues. This practice, for the 
most part, is barbarous, because it causes unnecessary pain and suffer- 
ing, prostrates the energies of the patient, irritates his delicate and 
sensitive nerves, and causes him to lose much rest and sleep thereby. 
It is a practice that we condemn ; for the improvements in the medi- 
cal science furnish us with newly-discovered means that afford ready 
relief to pleuritic and neuralgic pains, which frequently attend the 
consumptive, especially when tubercles are ulcerated without causing 
any pain, suffering, or soreness. 

We furnish our patients with a Chest Embrocation for the purpose 
of relieving the pains, which affords instantaneous relief to the pleuritic 
and neuralgic pains. 

The Chest-Expander. 

As valuable and as curative as the newly-discovered remedies for the 
cure of Consumption by inhalation have become, in our hands, and our 
improved system of constitutional treatment for correcting the im- 
paired nutritive functions, and altering the morbid conditions of the 
blood and vital fluids, we are in possession of other aids which are 
brought to bear with those valuable agents, which we furnish the 
patient, or direct him to prepare a Chest-Expander of our own inven- 



286 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

tion, something after the plan of the celebrated Dupuytren, which 
allows him gentle and valuable exercise in his own room, or in the 
yard in the open air, as the season may allow, and at the same time 
increase his vital capacity to a wonderful extent, by expanding the 
chest, at the same time giving great strength to the pectoral muscles. 
This Chest-Expander becomes a most admirable adjuvant to a cure. 



The Cure of Pulmonary Consumption by the Medium of the Stomach. 

It is well known that within a few years a new remedy, thought to 
have been such, has come into great vogue, and been extensively used 
by the old-school practice, as well as the new, for Consumption, in the 
shape of cod-liver oil. This, like every other new thing in the United 
States which has been adopted under the stimulus of excitement, goes 
with a rush for the time being, while the excitement lasts ; the conse- 
quence of which is invariably to impart to the thing itself a popularity 
undeserved, and that which can not be sustained. Such has been the 
case with cod-liver oil. Some few years ago the demand was so great 
for this article, that barrels of the oil of other fish — whale-oil, and even 
neat's-foot oil — were put into market, and sold in bottles as being of 
the " pure cod." 

The reasoning of medical men in regard to the therapeutic or cura- 
tive principles of the oil, was about as it has been with mercury, 
arsenic, digitalis, colchicum, and all the other remedies which, in 
turn, were offered as specifics for this melancholy disease. 

First it was alleged that its virtues consisted in the minute principle 
of iodine that was found in it. 

Again, it was asserted that it was owing to the bromine, because it 
was alleged that just a trace or a minute particle of that material had 
been discovered by analyzing the oil. It turned out eventually, in 
reference to the cod-liver oil, as it has of every other medicine of the 
old-school system of practice, that whatever beneficial results were 
derived from the use of the oil, were not from any medical agent that 
it contained. Science and experience have demonstrated this fact. 
That it has produced wonderful curative effects in many instances of 
Tubercular Consumption, there is not one particle of doubt ; for we 
have witnessed these results in our own practice. 

Upon what principle, then, depend these facts ? Upon this, namely, 
that pure cod-liver oil affords one of the best specimens of carbon that 
can be obtained for the purpose of keeping up a perfect combustion in 
the system of the delicate invalid or consumptive. 

Its great drawback is, that it is too " fishy," too apt to offend the 



ITS TREATMENT AND CURE. 287 

stomach, too prone to be belched up in the stomach a long time after 
it has been received ; hence it sickens many, and causes a disgust for 
food and healthy nutrition that otherwise would have been taken. 
This is its great drawback ; hence it has fallen almost into entire 
disuse. 

Following this same law that we have referred to in the United 
States — that where there is an excess of action or excess of excitement 
in regard to a thing or a topic, however worthy of interest — there ever 
will be a corresponding reaction and depression. The oil, in fact, has 
fallen, too much into disuse with those particular invalids who have a 
stomach or a capacity to take it with impunity, and without exciting 
disgust. 

Though we have made extensive and satisfactory use of cod-liver oil 
in our own practice in years gone by, we have now entirely discarded 
it ; for the very reason, that we seek to introduce a due amount of 
carbon in another shape — another material aliment that can be taken 
with a relish with the patient's daily food ; in the shape of fat beef, 
mutton, or lamb, fowl, and animal food that afford a due amount of 
fat or good carbon. We, therefore, encourage our patients to culti- 
vate an appetite, in the colder season of the year, for animal fats, 
which are essential to the maintenance of the temperature of the body, 
and of that pure combustion in the system that shall counteract all 
liability to tubercular deposition, and maintain an equable and healthy 
balance between the nerve function and circulative system, the nutri- 
tive functions and the lungs at the same time. 

Upon this point hangs the fulfillment of the second grand principle 
in the cure of Tubercular Consumption that we have laid down. The 
patient, then, or consumptive invalid, if he is not our patient, will bear 
its importance in mind, namely, the consumption of a due amount of 
carbon. 



The Dietary of the Consumptive. 

The two principal meals of the day, namely, breakfast and dinner, 
should consist, for the most part of the time, say eight months in the 
year or more, during all the colder weather, of fresh animal food. Of 
this, beef stands foremost ; for the red meats are most nutritious, and, 
when of a proper age, are' most easily assimilated into good blood. 
Next to beef come mutton and lamb, or venison and other wild game 
form a good substitute. Tender fowl, as chicken or turkey, or wild 
fowl, may be used, if they agree with the stomach of the invalid. 

The cooking of such meats forms no small consideration. Roasted, 



288 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

or broiled in the form of steaks, is far superior to any other method 
of cooking. It should never be dry nor over-done, but rather under- 
done, which renders it much easier of digestion. In the place of meat, 
where they agree with the consumptive, he may eat two or three fresh 
eggs, boiled for three minutes only. A change from eggs to fresh 
fish may be made occasionally, but only to suit the fastidiousness of 
the patient's appetite, or for convenience rather than nutrition ; for 
fish is hard of digestion, and affords but very little nutritive principle, 
when compared with animal food. To those patients subject to fever, 
fish and oysters may be preferable to so much meat, as they do not 
excite fever. 

We recommend the consumptive invalid to use sweet cream freely, 
and to make it form a part of two if not three meals a day. It may 
be used freely on his bread, or united with eggs, made in the form of 
a custard or omelet, provided it agrees with the stomach. Sweet 
cream may be united with flour in the form of a light sponge-cake ; 
or if light, digestible pies are required for a change, and to suit the 
fastidiousness of the patient's appetite, we have no objection, if the 
crust is made entirely of sweet cream. Sweet cream may be used with 
fruits, when the fruit is not too acid to change its nature to curd, and 
render it thereby indigestible. So also should good fresh butter be 
made free use of, spread upon cold stale bread ; for both butter and 
cream afford the respiratory aliment that is necessary to generate 
heat, and keep up a due temperature of the system, as well as af- 
ford other aliments which are necessary to build up the tissues of tho 
body. Meat and animal food of course should be eaten with well-cook- 
ed vegetables, as potatoes, and with bread ; likewise fruits, especially 
in their season, such as are digestible and well cooked, may be made 
free use of. The bread of the consumptive invalid should be that 
made of yeast well fermented, but free from acidity, and never should 
be used fresh, but should be a day or two old — stale. 

It would be improper to prescribe a set system of diet for the con- 
sumptive invalid, for frequently the appetite is capricious, and one 
thing would not be relished more than once or twice consecutively ; 
hence, a change under such circumstances should be made ; bearing in 
mind that the diet should be generous and nutritious, but of easy di- 
gestion. It should not be highly seasoned nor pickled. Pastries and 
rich food of every kind* should be scrupulously abstained from. Warm 
bread, freshly cooked bread, fried cakes, griddle-cakes, hot biscuits, 
buckwheat cakes, and cookery into which lard or butter enters, should 
be abstained from, as being very pernicious and oppressive to the stom- 
ach, disordering healthy digestion and assimilation ; in fact, it is im- 



ITS TKEATMENT AND CUKE. 289 

possible that good blood can be assimilated from such food. Mince- 
pie, rich cake, cheese, and all articles that are pickled, like cucumbers 
or lobster, salmon, and every thing that is heavy and indigestible, must 
be scrupulously avoided. The suppers should be light and made to 
consist of something easily digested. The beverage may consist in 
the morning of a cup of weak coffee, with sweet cream or boiled milk 
and sugar, provided it does not disagree with the stomach of the pa- 
tient ; if so, it should not be used. A weak cup of black or oolong 
tea may be used in its stead. Coffee made from burnt rye or barley, 
or a toasted crust of bread, is nutritious and forms a healthy drink, as 
it softens the water. We object to the use of much cold water being 
drank at meal-times, as it would lower the temperature of the stomach, 
and arrest a healthy process of digestion. If the invalid is thirsty, 
pure, soft, cool water may be rather sipped than drank between 
meals; but never in large quantities, as it would impede digestion. 

Manner of Eating. 
The consumptive invalid should take all due time to eat. The mind 
should be undistracted by cares and anxieties, and free from perturba- 
tion. In fact, no one should attempt to eat but in a buoyant and 
cheerful state of mind. The food should be well masticated, for the 
purpose of giving the salivary glands which line the fauces due chance 
to secrete that appropriate material which aids so extensively as a 
solvent to the food, and the furthering of a healthy process of diges- 
tion. He should therefore eat slow and take due time. 

Number of Meals and Times of Eating. 

With most invalids, three well-cooked meals a day, at equal divi- 
sions of time, are quite sufficient. It is far better than the habit, so 
much in use by some, of eating little and often ; for, in the latter case, 
the stomach is all the time kept teased, and does not get sufficient rest 
to recuperate its energies, and carry on a healthy process of digestion 
and assimilation. The consumptive invalid should have his breakfast 
very early, especially if he goes through with the tedious process of 
bathing and dressing in the morning on an entire empty stomach, 
which would in many instances be entirely prostrating ; hence, we ad- 
vise those who are debilitated to take a cup of boiled milk and water, 
or weak coffee, and scalded milk or cream, before attempting bathing 
and dressing, to sustain the strength. 

Exceptional cases there will be to this general rule of eating. 
Where the patient is very much debilitated, and his powers of stom- 
19 



290 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

ach will bear but a small quantity of food, some will require to take 
nutrition in the night, and not go too long without sustenance, when 
a sensation of faintness and debility would be induced thereby. 



The Clothing of the Consumptive Invalid. 

The consumptive invalid should pay the greatest attention to his 
clothing and dress, for the purpose of maintaining an equable temper- 
ature of the system, and guarding against all possible liabilities to 
cold, and the frequent vicissitudes of our climate. The under-gar- 
ments should be flannel, or all wool, both waistcoat and drawers ; 
woolen stockings also should be worn. In the colder season of the 
year, two pairs of stockings should be used ; likewise, should the 
boots or shoes be lined with flannel or false woolen soles. The under- 
garments worn through the day should be left off at night to venti- 
late, and frequently washed. The night-garments may or may not be 
all wool, as the patient needs. Those who are not troubled with 
chills, or a disposition to be cold, will find the cotton night-dress suf- 
ficient ; whereas, on the other hand, those whose temperature is low, 
and who are troubled with chills and cold feet, should sleep in woolen 
night-garments, as well as in woolen sheets. In the colder season of 
the year, a sufficient number of garments should be worn externally 
to keep up a uniform warmth, especially when going into the open 
air. This will afford the advantage of having the under-garments 
light and porous ; and also will afford the advantage of a better non- 
conducting power, as well as maintaining more equable heat or 
warmth of the air retained between the garments. 

The consumptive invalid should not dispense with woolen under- 
garments throughout the year ; but in the warm months of summer 
those of less thickness and lighter kinds may be made use of, but 
great caution should be observed in changing too suddenly. Hundreds 
of patients take severe cold, which results in internal congestions, often 
in pleurisy and pneumonia, and many instances terminate fatally by 
leaving off garments too early in the spring. In fact, the change 
should be made very gradually and cautiously. In the winter months, 
external garments made of chamois form a great protection against 
the liability to cold in going out. A Chester also of two thicknesses 
of flannel should be worn in the winter. This can be suspended with 
tape about the neck and taken off at night ; having changes which 
should be frequently washed with the other garments. Scrupulous 
regard must be paid to cleanliness in the clothing as well as of the 
body. 



ITS TREATMENT AND CURE. 291 



The Sleeping Apartments of the Consumptive Invalid: Air and Ventilation. 

The consumptive invalid, as well as all others in fact, should sleep in 
a large room — never less than fourteen or fifteen feet square. This 
should be arranged so that perfect ventilation can be maintained con- 
stantly all through the night, by lowering a window from the top, 
which should open with one in an opposite direction, or a door in an 
opposite direction, so that a current of pure air can be kept up contin- 
ually. If not convenient to obtain the ingress of fresh air by lowering 
the window, a ventilator should be made in the place of a pane of 
glass by perforating a piece of zinc or tin. In the winter season the 
latter method would be very judicious, having the holes made so small 
and with a sufficient number, that the current of air can be divided, so 
that there will be no risk of exposure by too free an ingress of 
cold air. 

The room of the patient should not be entirely closed nor shut up 
from the external atmosphere. Thousands of people are sacrificed by 
breathing close and confined air — the poisonous exhalations of their 
own breath over and over again — until the blood is perfectly contam- 
inated, the brain and nervous system depressed in their vital energies, 
and the lungs made to ulcerate. 

The consumptive should sleep alone by himself, and also, for 
the most part, room by himself, unless the ventilation is so perfect 
that it will preclude all liability of infecting the atmosphere of the 
room and thereby endangering another ; for a healthy person may be 
infected by a consumptive. We have known many instances, in our 
experience, where Consumption has been contracted in this manner. 

The consumptive should discard the use of a feather-bed and make 
use of a mattress ; one of hair or cotton will answer, but we prefer a 
mattress or bed of fresh oat-straw, which can frequently be thrown 
away and replenished anew. 

Both the bed and bedding of the consumptive should be exposed 
the instant that he arises, to ventilate, and left exposed through the 
entire day, and should not be made up until evening. Most people 
are in the habit of making their beds soon after leaving them in the 
morning, thus confining entirely the noxious exhalations of the preced- 
ing night, which become a source of noxious effluvia to be inhaled 
into the lungs. Such a practice is filthy, to say the least of it, aside 
from its dangerous effects upon the lungs and the blood. He should 
not forget the great necessity of duly ventilating his night-garments 
through the day also. 



292 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 



The Ablution and Bathing of the Consumptive Invalid. 

It is highly important that regular bathing should be maintained 
daily of the whole surface of the body. The proper time to do this, 
if done but once, is on awaking and before dressing in the morning. 
Nothing arouses the vital and nerve forces of the system equal to a 
sponge-bath in the morning. If the invalid is weak, and it would be 
too fatiguing for him to go through an ablution and rubbing alone, it 
should be done by an assistant. If he is liable to chill easily, the bath- 
ing should be done in a warm room, and the whole body should not 
be exposed at one time ; but the upper part, one arm, or the chest, 
may be washed and rubbed dry while the other parts of the body are 
kept covered, and each part in turn bathed without exposure to being 
chilled. In the winter the water should be warm, and salt should be 
dissolved in it at the rate of four table-spoonsful of fine salt to two 
gallons of water. Once a week, or oftener if necessary, Castile soap 
should be used in place of the salt, for the purpose of cleansing the 
skin sufficiently for health, but otherwise salt is the most tonic. This 
bathing or sponging of the body must be done expeditiously, though 
faithfully, and the invalid should be as expeditiously wiped dry with 
one towel ; then another rough dry towel should be made use of, and 
that so forcibly and dexterously as to cause a thorough reaction to 
take place, denoted by a sensation of warmth, or glow over the entire 
system. In the summer months the invalid should be again sponged 
with equal parts of spirits or alcohol and water on retiring to bed at 
night, for the purpose not only of cleansing the body from the impu- 
rities of the exhalations of the day, but of relieving the feverish ex- 
acerbation so liable to take place ; at the same time it insures refresh- 
ing sleep, that would not often otherwise be had. For the night- 
sweats of the consumptive this sponging of the body, with equal parts 
of alcohol and water, in most instances, will be found a perfect pre- 
ventive. Besides, this evening bathing acts as a tonic ; the spirit is 
absorbed into the circulation, which becomes invigorated thereby 
without any liability to a reaction, as is the case when given by the 
stomach. 



The Oure of Consumption in Infants and Children by the Inhalation of 
Medicated Vapors. 

The interested reader may suppose, because we have narrated in the 
preliminary sections of this work so many diversified forms of the 



ITS TREATMENT AND CURE. 293 

great tubercular deposit, as being manifested in the shape of scrofula, 
by swelling of the glands of the neck, tumid eyelids, spinal and hip- 
joint disease, enlargement and swelling of the mesenteric glands of 
the bowels, great proneness to be infested with intestinal worms, ma- 
rasmus, or general wasting of the tissues of the body, etc., that infants 
and children may not be much subject to tubercular formation in 
the lungs. But such is not the case ; for it is found by accurate 
statistical observation, based upon a large number of cases, that 
infants and children, in addition to their liability to the diversified 
forms of this tubercular disposition, are equally as liable to tubercles 
in the lungs as those of adult age, and even more so. The erroneous 
opinions so prevalent and generally held, in respect to this, have ob- 
tained from an erroneous diagnosis of the true nature and cause of 
death in infancy and childhood, on the part of their physicians. It is 
well known that the mortality among children, especially at certain 
seasons of the year in populous towns and cities, is very large. In the 
city of New- York, for instance, for many weeks during the summer 
season the bills of mortality announce five hundred deaths and up- 
wards per week of children ; and out of these five hundred deaths it 
would be hard to find one attributed to Tubercular Consumption. 
Why is this ? For the very reason that general practitioners who 
devote their attention almost exclusively to acute diseases are but 
little posted in the science of auscultation and percussion, as applied 
by the specialist in this department to elicit the true condition of the 
lungs, by listening to the sounds of respiration by the stethoscope, and 
otherwise ; hence the causes of deaths in children are announced to be 
from the effects of complications of the diseases in their final action or 
termination in some other organ or function of the body ; hence the 
deaths in childhood are announced to be, for instance, hydrocepha- 
lus, or dropsy of the brain, more frequently diarrhea or cholera-mor- 
bus ; for in the last stages in infantile consumption nothing is more 
common to be met with than the disturbance of the stomach and of 
the alimentary canal, hence the vomiting and purging which are of a 
tubercular character. Occasionally you will see announced as the 
cause of death for children, marasmus which, as we have before nam- 
ed, is a wasting of the tissues of the whole body; always involving the 
lungs as the primary seat of causes. 

"We will make our position good, namely, in proving the great mor- 
tality in infancy and childhood from Tubercular Consumption, by 
quoting from the statistics of N. Gurcent, Physician to the Hospital 
for Infantile Diseases in Paris — an institution, by the way, which 
never receives children above the age of sixteen nor below one — who 



2^4 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION". 

tolls us that tubercles are found in two thirds of all the children that 
die in the hospital. MM. Lombard and Pappovine, two other ex- 
perienced physicians, having the care of institutions devoted exclu- 
sively to their treatment, corroborate the same statistical facts. 

Another reason why physicians generally, or those who are devoted 
to general practice, and treat almost exclusively acute diseases, over- 
look the tubercular deposit, or consumption in the lungs of children, 
as being among the general causes for so much fatality, is this, name- 
ly, the symptoms of Tubercular Consumption in children are quite dif- 
ferently manifested from what they are in adult life. You will not 
meet but rarely with the same regular periodical hectic fever, or re- 
turn of the hectic flush. You will meet in the evening a parched 
skin, perhaps on the face a slight flush occasionally, and a moisture 
may appear about the forehead. Rarely will any regular attacks of 
chills be induced, as in the adult. The cough, if any, occurs in spas- 
modic fits or paroxysms. It is not attended with that frequent and 
prolonged hacking cough met with in grown people. You will not 
notice any expectoration, as in the adult patient. The child is too 
young to use reason and judgment to expectorate and eject it, by 
spitting it out, which is an act of volition in the adult. It is by them 
coughed up into the mouth, and swallowed into the stomach. ISTo 
spitting of blood attends the tubercular process of children, like the 
adult. From these and numerous other peculiar circumstances at- 
tending Tubercular Consumption in children, are physicians led to 
commit errors in diagnosis. Diarrhea occurs as a last termination, 
and this is attributed by the physician to indigestion or a weak 
stomach, instead of the tuberculization. Marasmus, or a general wast- 
ing of the whole system, takes place ; hence the death is so announced. 

Be it understood, therefore, by the reader, and those who shall be 
interested, that the general practitioner is incompetent, as a general, 
thing, to determine whether tubercles have been deposited in the lungs 
of children or not. This can only be determined by the aid of a stetho- 
scope brought to bear by a well-disciplined ear. 

We have mentioned what constitutes the tubercular indications and 
dispositions in children in the former section. Among them may be 
enumerated swollen eyelids, a puffed or tumid lip, or the lips may be 
dry and chapped; and a humor or pustular eruption will appear about 
the eyelids, or pustules may appear upon the body, especially behind 
the ears ; the nose may be tumid in instances ; the septum or alcena- 
zie and membranous lining of the nostrils may be much swollen or 
thickened. In many children the bowels become swollen, and often 
knotty and indurated. When these symptoms appear, we may strong- 



ITS TREATMENT AND CURE. 295 

ly suspect the tubercular deposition, and also that the tubercles have 
already commenced to be deposited in the lungs. 

Let the fond mother or tender parent, having a child manifesting 
any such symptoms, be not deceived nor misled that these are simple 
external symptoms of no moment ; for should she flatter herself with 
that idea, and procrastinate seeking a correct opinion in regard to the 
absolute cause for these external manifestations, however slight and 
harmless they may appear to her, the pang of self-reproof and regret 
will come too late to afford any relief or succor to her offspring. 

Perhaps it will be thought that it is a needless digression on our 
part that we have made towards the close of our little volume to step 
aside from what we have assigned to be our present and last duty, 
namely, to point out the true curative method for the treatment of Con- 
sumption, to narrate here symptoms and the cause of their indication. 
We do it for this reason, namely, to impart to others the knowledge 
which science and investigation have found, in making the treatment 
by medicated inhalation as certainly successful, when timely adopted, for 
children, as much so as in cases of maturer years. To all children, 
from four years of age and upwards, we direct the application of the 
vapors to the lungs by the inhaler. To them it becomes measurably 
the means of medication, and instead of exciting disgust or antipathy, 
is a matter of amusement and frequently sought for. To them is it 
doubly and trebly inviting and cheering, because the stomach is re- 
lieved of taking nauseous drugs and potions. To those under four 
years of age, as a general thing, the vapors must be administered by 
diffusing them in the nursery of the child, by evaporation, as ex- 
plained under the head of the Medicated Air-Chamber ; or evaporating 
the medical vapors by an alcohol-lamp in the room and by the bed- 
side of the patient, when necessity requires it, as advised in other 
more aggravated and appalling instances of a kindred nature, as ex- 
plained under the head of Diphtheria and Croup. They all follow in 
the same category of treatment and cure, if cured at all ; for they ap- 
peal alike to the disease and treatment, namely, the respiratory organs. 

Let me appeal, then, alike to every feeling mother, to every thought- 
ful father, if it is not their duty, under the present light that art and 
science now proffer them, that these rational methods explained for 
investigating and discovering the true condition of a child when ail- 
ing or sick, and of combining also, when seasonably discovered, such 
striking curative means — if it would not be sacrilege and a great dere- 
liction of moral duty on their part to neglect these advantages, and 
allow the process of diseased action to gain insidiously, though it 
may be, it has a foothold upon the constitution of their beloved off- 



296 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

spring, and allow such a mortality to continue, in the now general 
manner that characterize the bills of mortality in childhood. I ask you 
further — in view of the attainments of science and learning, and the 
general diffusion of physiology, and a knowledge pertaining to the 
laws of life — if it is reasonable to suppose that God designed such an 
early sacrifice of the innocents ? Oh ! no. Does it not more become 
your duty to study and to understand the defect in your system of 
living, the physical management and education that should so prema- 
turely and in so melancholy a manner cause such an early sacrifice ? 

I 

"In the first glow of beauty, the first flush of light, 

Should the day-dawn be swathed in the shadows of night ? 
Should the star of the morning pass fruitless away, 

And break to the fair earth the promise of day ? 
Ah ! no. Then why fade thus the loveliest of flowers ? 

"Why do the young and the beautiful die, 
Ere they drink of the rapture of summer's sweet hours — 

Ere the brow hath a cloud or the bosom a sigh ?" 



CLOSING ADDRESS TO INVALIDS. 297 



Closing Address to Invalids and Consumptives, 

The interested reader will not lose sight of our motives, announced 
in the preliminary section which induced us to write this little volume. 
Perhaps it would be a matter of supererogation to repeat them here, 
for he can refer to that section and ponder them at his leisure. He 
will, however, not lose sight of this fact, that we wish to have stand 
out in bold relief at the close, namely, that the author inherited by 
parentage, on both sides, a strong predisposition to two of the most 
fatal and deadly forms of Pulmonary Consumption. It was the cir- 
cumstances attending his early life in physical prostration and suffer- 
ing, and his ultimate recovery, that gave birth to the longing desire 
to become a physician and messenger of health to mankind. The de- 
sire seemed to be spiritually diffused in his breast in early life, under 
the feeling of untoward suffering brought upon him from erroneous 
notions on the part of those called to administer to him, and which he 
subsequently discovered proceeded from their great ignorance, in re- 
gard to the true principles of the healing art, which the old school to 
which they belonged seemed destitute of possessing. Their prom- 
inent dogma, as we have frequently mentioned, ever before and sub- 
sequent to this period of his life was, that Tubercular Consumption 
was incurable ; yet, when called to administer, in his case, instead of 
aiding nature, or the resources of the physical constitution, the vital 
stamina of the body, to throw off the inroads of disease by giving 
proper support in the way of nutrition, and giving to the patient a 
correct knowledge in regard to the laws of life, and nature's remedies 
— which are, by the way, the breathing of pure air, the maintaining 
of the natural temperature, the equalization of the circulation, and the 
support of the nerve-forces, the regulation and maintenance of the 
healthy functions of the body, the correct knowledge of the hygiene 
of clothing or dress, in combination with food, the ingesta and egesta 
— this most important knowledge of nature's remedies they did not 
understand nor seek to impart to the suffering consumptive ; but they 
absolutely blocked her wheels of motion and progression, by pouring 



293 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

into the stomach not only nauseous, sickening, and depressing rem- 
edies, but deadly poisons, in the shape of mercury, combined with the 
other barbarous, irritating, and prostrating system of blistering, bleed- 
ing, etc., which we have already narrated. The author was most for- 
cibly impressed with the absurdity of the allopathic system of treat- 
ment while in his youth, and was led then by the circumstances above 
named, to make the healing art his profession in life. This opened the 
way to an extensive inquiry and investigation into the general history 
and literature of Consumption. The result of these investigations was 
to discover the dawning of a new light, in regard to this hitherto con- 
sidered universally fatal disease. He discovered that the other eminent 
men whom he has referred to, and whom we need not repeat, had made 
the same discoveries in their practice, by numerous observations of 
cases which came to their view, namely, that after the patients had died 
of other diseases, they discovered that these patients, at some period 
of their life, had been subject to tubercular deposition in the lungs, 
which had run through the process of softening and ulceration, and 
that the caverns formed thereby, previous to their death, had healed. 
These facts, observed by Laennec, and Louis, Andrall, Murray, Ben- 
nett, and many others, opened to their minds the rational conclusion, 
that nature herself cures Consumption, when not thwarted or interfered 
with by the prostrating and poisonous effects of allopathic treatment 
— the same conclusion the author had come to by the circumstances 
of his early suffering in his youth. 

These facts, then, stood up as a matter of demonstration, adduced 
by the best medical men of the world, to prove that Consumption was 
curable. Then the question arose in the author's mind, that if Con- 
sumption was curable by nature, could it not be much more curable 
and brought into the daily application, when aided by the judicious as- 
sistance of art? His investigations in this department for many 
years resulted in the discovery of the important facts in regard 
to the true cause of Tubercular Consumption in the lungs. Be 
it understood here, then, by the reader, that the notions or doc- 
trines of the school before this, respecting the cause or causes of 
tuberculization, were as vague and as inconsistent as their practice it- 
self. It becomes, then, a true axiom in medicine, that " the discovery 
of the cause is half of the cure." 

We have repeated this so often in the preceding sections, that it 
will be entirely unnecessary to repeat it here, other than to say, that 
the cause of the tuberculization in the lungs is unburnt, unconsumed 
carbon, and that this carbon obtains in the process of sanguification or 
blood-making, by two defects generally. Sometimes there may bo 



CLOSING ADDRESS TO INVALIDS. 299 

but one cause or defect, in the main, that may be morbid derange- 
ment in the process of assimilation or digestion, or both, as explained 
in the preceding section, and illustrated by a cut. In the second 
place, the cause of this imperfect, carbonaceous material circulating 
in the blood, and not being duly consumed, and carried out and elim- 
inated from the blood by its proper function or emunctory, namely, 
the lungs, is because the patient breathes confined or contaminated air, 
destitute of oxygen, which is the only agent for keeping up this com- 
bustion in the lungs to cause it to be eliminated. The scientific fact, 
then, became substantiated — that in order to cure and remove the 
tubercular condition, it must be done mainly through the medium of 
the lungs, by introducing an extra amount of oxygen, in combination 
with the proper essential medicaments to put the diseased parts in a 
condition for the vital forces to heal. I can hardly make this work 
complete without alluding here to another principle discovered by 
those eminent medical men referred to, that nature possesses of curing 
tubercles herself, other than of healing the ulcerated caverns in the 
lungs — it is this, namely, that often it is found that this tubercular 
matter has taken on a transformation or change into what is termed a 
state of concretion — transforming into a limy or calculous concre- 
tion. Again, it has been discovered that tubercles in their miliary 
stage of deposition are dispersed by arousing the absorbents of the 
system — in other words, have been taken up by the absorbents of the 
lungs. 

This most important fact was universally disputed for years by 
what had been deemed, up to this present time, the most learned 
physiologists of the world. It was denied that the lungs possessed 
any absorbent vessels for the purpose of carrying off such extraneous 
deposition. But other investigators who have devoted themselves to 
the treatment of pulmonary diseases, as great specialists, having a field 
for observation to pursue their inquiries in, have demonstrated the 
fact beyond a doubt, that tubercles may be absorbed. Dr. John 
Hughes Bennett, the most eminent professor of the Institute of Medi- 
cine in the University at Edinburgh, announces this fact in his valuable 
work on tuberculosis. So also does Dr. Turnbull, of the Hospital for 
Consumptives in Liverpool. Likewise Professor Ansell, Dr. Theophi- 
lus Thompson, and Dr. Cotton, of the Hospital for Consumptives at 
Brompton, in England. We will quote the language of Dr. Cotton, 
whose opinions are the same as those of the preceding men. Says 
Dr. Cotton : " The possibility of tubercles becoming absorbed has been 
much questioned ; but I have witnessed so many instances in which the 
recovery was complete, and all evidence of pulmonary disease was en- 



300 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

tirely dissipated, after every general and physical symptom of tubercu- 
lar deposition had been unmistakably manifested, that I can not for a 
moment doubt its occasional occurrence — less often it is true than we 
could desire, but still sufficiently frequent to encourage hope, and to 
lead to a steady perseverance in those measures which are likely to 
promote it." 

The present author, in his newly-discovered system of Cold Medi- 
cated Inhalation, endeavored not only to aid the dissolving and com- 
bustion of tubercular deposit in the lungs, and to stimulate also the 
diseased, inflamed, and ulcerated or sluggish surfaces, which obtain in 
the ulcerated condition, to aid them to heal, but, profiting by this dis- 
covery, so combines his vapors as to arouse the energies of the ab- 
sorbents, to cause the deposition to be taken up, and dispersed from 
the lungs. Such is the important discovery in the new mode of ad- 
ministering cold medicated inhalation. 

In view of this light, and these important discoveries in the healing 
art, the consumptive invalid who finds himself in the situation to Con- 
sult a physician, certainly can not and should not go to one of the old 
school, who continues to this day and to this hour to not only diffuse 
the idea, as it were, that Consumption is incurable, but always holds 
himself in readiness to prescribe — to prescribe what ? A treatment 
that is deadly, and, in itself, prostrating and devitalizing ; while his 
doctrine is a contradiction of the dictates of reason and experience, or 
the established rules of the healing art ; for physicians of the old school 
discover themselves to be behind the age, and it is dangerous to allow 
them to prescribe for or to manage any such a case. One thing, then, 
you will reflect upon. What is the nature of your disease ? Where 
is its seat ? Is it not in the lungs ? Then, if it is in the lungs, it is 
a local disease, situated in an organ whose function is respiration, or the 
breathing of air. You can see, then, the preposterous nature of put- 
ting medicines or drugs into the stomach to remove a disease, granu- 
lation, or tuberculization of matter which is in your lungs. 

Flee, then, I implore you, from allopathy, from that dangerous and 
deadly doctrine and practice. Furthermore, you do not wish to go 
and intrust your life into the hands of a physician who does not be- 
lieve in the curability of Consumption. What consistency would 
there be in his administering to you medicines, when he does not be- 
lieve that you can be cured ? This alone will deter you from putting 
yourself in the hands of an allopathic physician. Have they ever 
cured one case by their system of treatment ? It is not found in all 
the medical books that have been Avritten from the days of Hip- 
pocrates down to the present time. Every author who has written 



CLOSING ADPKESS TO INVALIDS. 3^1 

on Consumption for U\o thousand years has pronounced the disease 
incurable by their system of practice. Cases almost without number 
modern physiologists and pathologists do find that have recovered. 
But how ? Not by medication — no one case do ihey adduce as 
having been cured or recovered by medication. IsTot until the newly- 
discovered system of medicated inhalation, or breathing of medicines 
by vapors into the lungs, scientifically administered under judicious 
discrimination and advice, had a case ever been cured. 

lSTow, under our system of treatment, instances of Tubercular Con- 
sumption are cured daily, and as frequently as ordinary diseases are 
cured by proper medication — in fact, more so. " The reader will call to 
mind the cases that we have adduced in this book, which were cured 
by our system of medicated inhalation even after they had advanced 
into the third, suppurative, or ulcerative stage of Consumption, when 
caverns had formed in the lungs. Such patients so affected for five and 
six years together, are permanently cured and now living. Such is 
the case of Mr. Otis Walker, who now is an honorable member of the 
Assembly, at Montpelier, Vermont, 1863. Such is the case of Miss 
Amanda E. Green, Danby, Vermont. Such is the case of Mrs. Har- 
riet Coolidge, Sherburne, Vermont. Such is the case of Dr. John 
Smith, Trenton, Clinton county, Illinois. Aside from these cases of 
Tubercular Consumption, a large number of others, complicating Tu- 
bercular and Bronchial Consumption, have been permanently cured, 
as well as obstinate laryngitis that had terminated in aphonia, or loss 
of voice, complicated with ulcerated throat. 

But, further, the consumptive invalid will reflect that nearly all 
these patients who have been cured by our system of treatment in- 
volved great derangement in the nutritive functions, where is situated 
the primary cause, in many instances, for the tubercular deposit. He 
will be encouraged with the understanding that there is nothing em- 
bodied in our system of practice to irritate or to nauseate, or to de- 
press or to debilitate, as is embodied in the old-school practice. The 
most of our patients have been so far gone, that they were in many 
instances unable to work or to pursue any employment. Some of 
them were entirely bed-ridden ; yet they all became energized in a 
little time under our system of treatment ; so much so, that they were 
able to pursue their vocations, and, in many instances, engage in ar- 
duous, laborious business. Such is the case of Mr. Abram O'Donnell, 
who, when he first came under our treatment, was not able to work 
two hours in the day ; for the last four years he has worked constantly 
ten hours in the day, pursuing an unhealthy and laborious business at 
the press. 



302 TULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

In farther illustration of the curative and invigorating system of 
our medication, given to correct the morbid derangement in the di- 
gestive and assimilative functions, is the case of Miss Amanda E. 
Green. Her letter shows that she had been confined to her bed, and 
under allopathic treatment for upwards of three months ; when, in 
less than six weeks after coming under our treatment, she was freed 
from her bed, and able to walk ; and in nine weeks from the time that 
we prescribed for her, she took a long journey of seventy miles by 
rail, on a cold winter's day, which she stood with impunity, and to 
her benefit. 

The invalid will recollect, therefore, that in addition to our treatment 
of cold, medicated inhalation, given to correct the disease in the 
lungs, the system of practice that we adopt for the enervation and 
defective nutrition, so often complicated with the tubercular deposit, 
is congenial and consistent with the laws of nutrition and the laws 
of hygiene. It embodies the most restorative principles in the shape 
of food, advised by a judicious discrimination to suit the peculiar 
needs of each patient, as they are ascertained by a minute investiga- 
tion into their respective cases, as pointed out in the directions in 
this work, by analysis, if necessary, and by replies to the interroga- 
tories which we furnish them. It is from the great ignorance of the 
laws of life and health, and their disregard of the same, as far as they 
have understood them in the old-school profession, that Consumption 
has defied their prescriptions, and death laughed at the impotency of 
their art. 

The mischief that has been done by the old-school physicians, from 
the absurdity and the disji>araging influence of their doctrine, in re- 
gard to the incurability of Pulmonary Consumption, is beyond all 
human calculation to estimate. It has caused the untimely death of 
thousands. From the impression that has been conveyed to those in 
families that knew they had an inherited predisposition or tendency 
to it, where there were ailments and indications of failing health, 
from other causes even, this one impression being ever uppermost in 
their mind, has paralyzed their energies, depressed their hope, en- 
gendered a spirit of listlessness, and been the very means of causing 
Consumption to become developed where it would not otherwise have 
taken place. So in this point of view, if they have not interfered in 
certain instances of families, or had the opportunity of doing so, with 
their depressing and barbarous system of allopathic practice, the all- 
prevailing influences of the fatality of Consumption, which have ever 
emanated from them, have been as disastrous to cause Consumption 
to be developed, and to fix its fatality in these particular instances of 



CLOSING ADDRESS TO INVALIDS. 303 

family inheritance, as though they had been prematurely sent out of 
the world by their debilitating and deadly system of practice. 

Again, the absurdity of the doctrine has proved equally disastrous 
and fatal in another way, namely, in conveying the universal impres- 
sion and notion that Tubercular Consumption could only be inherited, 
causing others who thought they were not liable to it by hereditary 
predisposition to live more reckless in regard to the laws of health, 
subjecting themselves to unwise and imprudent exposures, colds, and 
dampness, and the sudden vicissitudes of the weather, which termi- 
nated by the acquirement, in thousands of such instances, in Consump- 
tion ; whereas, could the correct impression and knowledge have pre- 
vailed in place of it, namely, that Tubercular Consumption is acquired 
and taken on, in the larger majority of instances, than it is inherited, 
by improper modes of living, imprudent exposures, the inhalation of 
vitiated air, etc., its fatality, in this point of view, would have been 
lessened to a remarkable extent. 

The medical profession, from the days of Hippocrates to Galen, and 
from Galen to the present time, have endeavored to. keep the people 
in consummate ignorance in regard to the cause or causes of disease, 
ignoring, as it were, in their practice, in their habits, and manner of 
intercourse with their patients, all idea that health was the result of 
fixed and absolute laws ; ever conveying the impression thereby, that 
sickness, pain, and suffering were the results of some mysterious, 
hidden, and to them (the people) unfathomable cause, only to be 
known and understood by those that were bred in the schools, and 
instructed in their peculiar theories. Hence, the almost universal im- 
pression among the people to the present hour is, that a remedy for 
sickness, pain, and physical suffering must be found in some mysteri- 
ous medicine or compound ; and the more secret the nostrum is kept, 
the greater -the faith in its virtue. The legitimate effect of this gen- 
eral belief has appealed, therefore, to one faculty of the mind alone, 
namely, marvelousness, instead of reason and judgment. Hence, 
absurd and as ridiculous as it may appear, it is, notwithstanding, a 
fact, that the efficacy of doctoring, to use the common phrase, or the 
use of medicines, is the result of a faith in their mysterious potency. 
The old-school physicians are well aware of this, hence their endeavor 
and their delight is to keep the people in ignorance in regard to the 
laws of life and hygiene ; and mankind generally have been too 
prone to keep themselves in ignorance, and to maintain an implicit 
confidence in the physician, and not to think and investigate for them- 
selves, as they should do, to understand that sickness and premature 
death are the legitimate and inevitable results, the penalty for violat- 



30 J: PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

ing the absolute and inexorable laws that govern life and health. 
They hare ever been disposed to think or to believe, when sickness 
and Buffering overtook them, that there was some royal road, some 
short cut to relief, and again to their restoration to health, by taking 
the pills and potions that the doctor carried in his saddle-bags, or 
gave a prescription to obtain at the apothecary's. 

Such is the desire for drug-taking, and the gratification of the faith 
in this mysterious power of medicine, that it requires a physician to 
be extremely developed, or possessed in conscientiousness or the 
principles of moral honesty, with great dec^ion of character, to at- 
tempt to disabuse his patients of it ; fearing to sacrifice his vocation, 
and a fair chance for a livelihood. In many instances, we have seri- 
ously sacrificed our temporal and pecuniary interest by the offense 
produced from conscientious motives, in telling our patients, when 
consulted, to prescribe for their maladies and physical ills, that it was 
not medicines nor physic that they needed, but a more rigid observ- 
ance of the laws of their constitution, to regulate and establish some 
of the functions of the body which they had deranged. 

Let my readers reflect, then, upon the importance of the truth that 
I here narrate ; seeing the disastrous consequences of enlightening the 
people, they refuse to be honest rather than sacrifice their bread and 
butter, by breaking light where they are well aware still greater 
blindness would be the result of the too sudden glare of its refulgence. 

In respect to this moral, willful blindness and a desire to be led into 
or kept in error, how forcible the truth of Savage Landor's observa- 
tion, when he says : " In the intellectual as in the physical, men grasp 
you firmly and tenaciously by the hand, creep close by your side, step 
by step, while you lead them into darkness ; but when you lead them 
into light, they start and quit you." 

To be the pioneer of publishing and bringing to light any great dis- 
covery or lasting improvement in the healing art, requires great moral 
courage and much fortitude of mind, on the part of the physician ; 
for such has been the tyranny or conservatism among the faculty, that 
he who has had the temerity to make such an announcement has ever 
shared the bitter consequence of their persecution and envy. 

The annals of medicine have ever proved this fact, namely, that 
every new discovery possessing any tendency to the mitigation of the 
suffering and amelioration of the condition of mankind, has met with 
these results. Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, 
lost his business on publishing it. The introduction of inoculation for 
mitigating the ravages of the small pox, by Lady Mary Montague, 
proved disastrous to her reputation. Before the times of Francis I., 



CLOSING ADDRESS TO INVALIDS. 305 

surgeons staunched the blood by the application of boiling pitch to 
the surface of the stump ; but when Ambrose Par tied the arteries and 
introduced the ligature, he was howled down by the faculty of physic, 
who ridiculed the idea of hanging human life on a thread, when boil- 
ing pitch had stood the test of centuries. Similar instances of perse- 
cution followed the introduction of Peruvian Bark by the Jesuits. 
And in another instance of the discovery and introduction of a valu- 
able medicine by one of the faculty, he was arrested by an order from 
the president of the college of physicians, and imprisoned in New- 
gate. The same spirit of envy and persecution has ever pervaded the 
faculty from that time to this, respecting the introduction of every 
new system of practice having a direct tendency to ameliorate the 
sufferings of mankind. Says Dr. Flood: "There exists in our profes- 
sion — to the lasting shame and disgrace of its members be it spoken 
— a spirit of opposition so determined, and of jealousy so bitter, that 
no sooner does some original mind propound some great project for 
the amelioration of human suffering, or the advancement of science, 
than whole hordes are ready to pounce upon the possessor, and, with 
true littleness of mind, assail him with abuse, which not unfrequently 
sinks into the lowest vulgarity." 

This same spirit of envy and persecution is now manifested, for the 
most part, (with some very few honorable exceptions,) by the old-school 
physicians toward the discovery and introduction of cold medicated 
inhalation for the cure of Bronchial and Tubercular Consumption ; 
the disease being in the lungs, and the lungs being breathing or re- 
spiratory organs, if reached at all by medicines, can only be done so 
by breathing ; and not by sending medicines, as is practiced by the 
old school, on a blind and uncertain mission by the stomach. They 
pronounced this system of medicated inhalation a humbug and species 
of quackery, in the face and eyes of anatomy and physiology ; because 
the improvements in the more rational system of modern practice, at- 
tending enlightened specialists, who have studied with wonderful as- 
siduity and intense application, the scientific principles in the animal 
economy, and made the discovery in opposition to their old theories, 
that the system requires to be supported, nourished, and sustained by 
nutrition, and the requisite primary aliments of the blood, instead of 
being debilitated and prostrated — for this rational treatment, he is 
called by them a quack, an impostor. 

But we will not dwell here. "We live in an age in which people are 

beginning to think for themselves. To all such the source of this envy 

and the motives for their persecution, will be easily understood. A 

doctrine or a problem that can be easily refuted and exposed — a dog- 

20 



306 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

ma that can be easily overthrown — institutes or inculcates neither 
envy nor persecution. So in regard to the merits of the benign sys- 
tem of cold medicated inhalation for the curability of Pulmonary 
Consumption. Were its merits not proved by so many living wit- 
nesses as we have adduced, neither envy nor persecution would ever 
obtain from our professional brethren. The improved and newly dis- 
covered system of practice for Consumption and diseases of the throat 
and respiratory organs, stands supported and braced by columns of 
living Witnesses, and testimonials from among the people in all ranks 
of life. Its pathway is not marked by tombstones and monuments 
erected to the memory of the departed, who have fallen on every 
hand, as the results of a barbarous and mortal system of medication, 
which have ever attended the ranks of allopathy. In this world there 
is no envy so bitter, so writhing, as that which results from profes- 
sional rivalry. The problem, then, will be easily solved by every one 
of my intelligent readers, and every inquiring invalid and consumptive 
possessing the dignity of character to reason and reflect for himself 
upon the merits of my system of medical treatment — that the envy 
and persecution it meets with, spring from its success. No medical 
man, however humble his position, or aspiring his station in life, en- 
vies his professional brother, when that brother does not excel him. 
We trust, therefore, that it will not be thought egotism in us when we 
say that we feel an unbounded share of gratitude for possessing suf- 
ficient moral courage and dignity of character to endure any amount 
of persecution that shall emanate from the professional ranks, in re- 
gard to our treatment and the discoveries that we have made for the 
curability of Consumption, that hitherto dreaded malady, the very 
name of which has struck awe and disconsolation to so many hearts. 
To the conscientious and benevolent physician who contemplates the 
good of his fellow-men in the welfare of posterity, pecuniary sacrifice 
should be a trifling consideration. On this point, therefore, so far as 
my treatment is concerned, I may quote the remarks of Scuddemore : 
" It is not on selfish ground that I advocate the practice. What con- 
cerns my reputation is personal and transient, and of little moment. 
What relates to science and the interests of mankind is for all ages, 
and of inestimable importance." 

Every true and enlightened physician will not adopt the healing art 
for the purpose of subjugating it to mercenary ends. But we are re- 
minded that we must bring both this section and our book to a close. 
The field is so vast, the demands are so great, the wants of the suffer- 
ing invalid and consumptive are so numerous, that we have been com- 
pelled thereby to prolong this work beyond our intentions ; but we 



ITS TREATMENT AND CURE. 307 

must find our apology for its prolixity in the merits of the subject. 
Before we close, therefore, there is one important point of considera- 
tion on the part of the consumptive invalid, which demands a word 
of passing impressive caution. Consumption is a disease of a most 
wily and insidious nature. It flatters the wisest and the most cau- 
tious. It challenges alike the timid and the daring. There is not an- 
other disease perhaps to be found in the whole annals of medicine, to 
which the human system is liable, that leads its victim to such hopeful 
and yet erroneous conclusions, respecting its fatality. 

As I have above hinted, the large majority of cases are not inher- 
ited. It is the result of a " slight cold." I beg, therefore, to caution 
every one who has a fixed or settled cold, or a tendency to irritation 
or inflammation of the throat, the bronchia, and respiratory organs, 
marked with a frequent desire to clear the throat, who become 
fatigued and out of breath on every slight exertion, that they are on 
the road to all those changes and symptoms which constitute Con- 
sumption. I beg to notify you — you who are complaining of colds 
and their consequences, that you are nurturing in your bosom a viper 
or a serpent, which, if not crushed in the egg, is destined to take your 
life. Do not, therefore, be allured by the commonplace every-day 
remark and appellation that you have nothing more than a common 
cold, a catarrh, or a slight sore throat. Thousands and tens of thou- 
sands have been deluded by the same words ; they have been led, step 
by step, until the cold had become seated permanently upon the lungs, 
and developed tubercular deposit, when it was not thought of. Many 
when applying to their physicians, receive their very trivial decision 
that such was all that ailed them. Delusive words ! Had they un- 
derstood what they were about, and possessed the requisite qualifica- 
tions, and been imbued with the spirit of being the benign messenger 
of the holy flame of life and health to man, and called it by its right 
name, Consumption, it would have awakened them from their apathy 
to a consciousness of their condition, and they might have been 
saved. 

I therefore, in conclusion, advise all those with such tendencies to 
consult and secure the best aid and requisite treatment in season to 
arrest its progress, which is surely onward to develop fatal Consump- 
tion in the end, as sure as he who leaves on a journey, by a safe and 
expeditious conveyance, is to reach his destination. 

Though we believe that Consumption is curable in the ulcerative or 
last stage, when caverns form in the lungs, yet those instances are 
rare, and not of every-day occurrence. We would not be the willing 
instruments of promising or affording hope where there is but little 



308 PULMONARY CONSUMPTION. 

expectation of its being realized. Consumption is practicably curable 
in the incipient stages — almost uniformly so, where the derangements 
are simply functional ; where the irritations are catarrhal and affect- 
ing the mucous membranes, and are now on the road to the lungs ; 
when the cough is yet slight, and the difficulty of respiration is being 
sensibly noticed ; and when an impaired appetite and process of di- 
gestion and blood-making have not been seriously interfered with. 
These symptoms mark the commencement of a process to a stage 
that will become thoroughly and deeply seated in the lungs, and if 
not arrested at this period, will certainly terminate in a destructive 
process of ulceration, and final dissolution of the seat of all vitality. 
But even in this last stage much, very much can be done to mitigate 
the patient's suffering ; to appease the harassing cough, and to cool 
the fevered brow ; to render his nights less restless, and to shorten 
their tedious hours ; to support his failing strength, and perchance to 
effect a final cure and restoration again to health. But far wiser 
would it be for the consumptive invalid to seek that aid which science 
and art now so certainly proffer in season, and be relieved of those 
harassing reflections that will come to every prudent, reflecting mind, 
that he otherwise must look upon a future unrolling in gloom and 
in darkness. 

May this little volume, which we have labored so hard to write, 
amid the fatiguing labor of an active professional life — written when 
we were worn down by fatigue at the late hours of the night; when 
we should have been recuperating our energies by nature's " sweet 
restorer, balmy sleep," but our solicitude was so intense for suffer- 
ing humanity that we knew were scattered all over the land, who 
needed to be informed where the source and fountain of relief could 
be found, we felt under a heavy debt — a weight of duty — that would 
give us no rest until it was discharged — may it go forth on its angelic 
mission, and find access, alike to the cot of the humblest peasant and 
the mansion or palace of the millionaire. Pain and sickness are equal- 
ly the lot of the rich and the poor. It would have been an unwise 
dispensation of Providence if gold had been permitted to purchase 
that which is the poor man's chief wealth, and the want of which re- 
duces the affluent to worse than " indigence." We feel it our humble 
but yet solemn duty to afford the same encouraging hope — that the 
gift of healing and the restorative agencies come alike to the poor as 
well as the rich. Though the possessor of gold and wealth will find 
and obtain the facilities more conveniently, yet let the depressed and 
•desponding child of poverty, though he may be found in some log- 
cabin on some broad, bleak prairie of the West, or just discovered in 



ITS TREATMENT AND CURE. % 309 

the distant borders approaching the Rocky Mountains, be encouraged 
with the assurance that God, in his merciful providence, never has left 
his cause without a witness. He keeps it untarnished and untrameled 
from mercenary design. Some benevolent agent will be impressed to 
provide in the scope of his lot the healing balm for that suffering 
humble patient. 

" Oh ! while along the stream of time thy name 
Expanded flies, and gathers all its fame, 
Say, shall my little bark attendant sail, 
Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale t 9 



INDEX. 



•-»-• 

Portrait of the Author. 

Title-Page, 1 

The Pulmometer, 2 

Preliminary Remarks, 3 

Form of Report, 9 

Motives for Adopting Pulmonary and Chest Diseases as a Specialty, . . 13 

Pulmonary Consumption, 20 

Authority and Testimony of the Perfect Curability of Pulmonary Consumption, 24 

Symptoms of Tubercular Consumption, .33 

What is Tubercular Consumption ? 46 

Causes of Tubercular Consumption, 50 

Heat and Light next in importance to Pure Air for the Sustaining of our Physical 

Existence, . . . 58 

Light essential to the Maintenance of Perfect Health ; Seclusion from it another 

Great Cause for Tubercular Consumption, 65 

Catarrh, or Cold, a Certain Precursor of Pulmonai'y Consumption, ... YO 

Causes of Catarrh. Tendency and Dangers of Catarrh, . . . . f6 

Practical Remarks on Catarrh. Bad Breath from Catarrh, .... Sft 

The great Advantage of the Newly-Discovered Methods of Exploring the Chest, and 
Determining the Incipient Stages of Tubercular Consumption, especially by 

the Author's Pulmometer, or Lung-Tester, . 88 

Scrofula, the Foundation and Cause of Tubercular Consumption, ... 96 

Diphtheria and Plastic Bronchitis, . .118 

Treatment of Diphtheria and Plastic Bronchitis, 125 

Bronchitis, 130 

Treatment of the Acute Stage of Bronchitis, 132 

Chronic Bronchitis, 134 

Asthma, or Spasmodic Difficulty of Breathing, 143 

Treatment of Asthma, 151 

Hay-Asthma, 154 

Tubercular Disease of the Kidneys — Bright's and Addison's Diseases of the Kid- 
neys—Atrophy, or Morbid Wasting of the Kidneys, and other Diseases of the 
Kidneys, 159 



INDEX. 

Tape-Worm, Taenia Solium ; its intimate connection with Tubercular and Scrofulous 

Constitutions, 181 

Disease of the Heart, Organic and Functional, .193 

Laryngitis, or Acute Inflammation of the Larynx, . . . . . . 199 

Chronic Laryngitis, 200 

Treatment, * 201 

Diseases peculiar to Females, 202 

Practical Remarks, 223 

Marasmus, or a Consumption of the Tissues and Vital Fluids of the Body. Self- 
immolation, or Sacrifice on the Altar of Passion, the Cause for the Early 

Physical Degeneracy of the American People, 229 

Of the Treatment and Cure of Consumption, . . . . . . . 270 

The Manner of Administering Medicines by Inhalation, 277 

Mode of Inhalation of the Cool Medicated Vapors, 278 

Change of Climate Unnecessary and Highly Injudicious, 282 

Exercise in the Open Air becomes highly Essential to the Cure of Tubercular 

Consumption, 284 

Treatment of Consumption by External Application to the Skin, . . .285 

The Chest-Expander, 285 

The Cure of Pulmonary Consumption by the Medium of the Stomach, . . 286 

The Dietary of the Consumptive, . . . 287 

Manner of Eating, . . . . . . 289 

The Clothing of the Consumptive Invalid, 290 

The Sleeping Apartment of the Consumptive Invalid — Air and Ventilation, . 291 

The Ablution and Bathing of the Consumptive Invalid, 292 

The Cure of Consumption in Infants and Children by the Inhalation of Medicated 

Vapors, 292 

Closing Address to Invalids and Consumptives, 297 




